THE  PSYCHIC  SIDE  OF  FEMINISM 


FLORENCE  GUERTIN  TUTTLE 


THE  AWAKENING  OF 
WOMAN 

SUGGESTIONS    FROM    THE    PSYCHIG 
SIDE    OF    FEMINISM 


BY 
FLORENCE  GUERTIN  TUTTLE 

W 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


«* 


^ 


Copyright,  1915.  by 
FLORENCE  GUERTIN  TUTTLE 


TO  MY  SONS, 

DAY  AND  GUERTIN  TUTTLE, 

WHOSE  COMPANIONSHIP  AND  NECESSITIES 

HAVE  AWAKENED  IN  ME  A  SENSE 

OF  LARGER  RESPONSIBILITY 


"And  a  little  child  shall  lead  them.' 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Foreword 7 

I.  The  Misunderstood  Woman  Question.     11 

THE  CREATIVE  AWAKENING 

n.  Woman  and  Genius 31 

III.  Why  a  Mentally  Creative  Womanhood  x 

IS  Desirable 50  ] 

THE  SOCIAL  AWAKENING 

rV.  Motherhood 77 

V.  Woman  and  the  Revaluation  of  Life  .     99 

THE  AWAKENING  OF  THE  SENSE  OF 
RACE  RESPONSIBILITY 

VI.  The  Relation  of  Woman  to  Eugenics.  .   123 
VII.  Natural  and    Spiritual  Selection  in 

Marriage 146 


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FOREWORD 

The  European  war  instead  of  relegating 
the  woman  question  to  the  background  in 
reality  forces  it  to  the  front.  The  work  of 
Europe  to-day  is  to  a  large  degree  being 
done  by  women.  While  the  war  is  making 
widows  and  orphans  it  is  also  creating  fem- 
inists of  an  advanced  type. 

A  feminist  we  assume  to  be  a  woman  with 
an  awakened  sense  of  individual  responsi- 
bihty  toward  hfe,  expressing  this  responsi- 
bility in  action.  Feminism  becomes  thus  a 
matter  of  spiritual  initiative  and  impulse. 

The  woman's  movement  has  been  viewed 
from  many  angles.  It  has  been  seen  as  a  sex 
problem,  a  domestic  problem,  an  industrial 
problem,  and  a  political  problem,  according 
to  the  insight,  or  the  bewilderment,  of  the 
spectator.  But  the  psychic  awakening — the 
real  cause  of  feminism — ^has  been  relatively 
overlooked. 

These  chapters  are  an  effort  to  trace  to 

7 


8  FOREWORD 

their  mental  and  spiritual  sources  the  grow- 
ing activities  of  women,  and  to  indicate  that 
the  freeing  of  woman's  creative  energies, 
instead  of  being  inimical  to  human  progress, 
is  in  reality  necessary  to  it. 

F.  G.  T. 


THE   MISUNDERSTOOD  WOMAN 
QUESTION 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Misunderstood  Woman  Question 

It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
no  other  question  of  modern  times  has  been 
so  much  discussed,  and  so  befogged  and  ob- 
scured in  the  discussion,  as  the  omnipresent 
woman  question.  And  the  reason  is  not  far 
to  seek:  we  are  still  in  its  throes.  An  object 
viewed  too  near  is  likely  to.be  thrown  out  of 
focus.  Also  the  very  magnitude  of  the  ques- 
tion alarms  and  confuses  us.  One  half  the 
race,  and  all  posterity,  seem  threatened  by 
the  new  activities  of  women.  The  business 
of  hfe  is  to  preserve  racial  integrity.  Small 
wonder,  then,  that  the  world  regards 
obliquely  and  with  suspicion  the  apparent 
revolt  of  so  large  a  proportion  of  its  com- 
ponent parts. 

But  is  there  any  occasion  for  real  alarm? 
May  we  not,  by  a  process  of  elimination, 
arrive  at  the  source  of  misunderstanding? 
We  may  not  comprehend  the  woman  ques- 
tion, for  instance,  if  we  regard  merely  the 

11 


12       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

woman  of  to-day.  It  is  necessary  to  take 
the  long  look  down  the  ages  and  visualize 
the  woman  of  all  time.  And  one  must  focus 
this  woman  in  her  relation  to  the  march  of 
human  events.  To  isolate  the  question  is  to 
see  woman  under  the  shadow  of  an  eclipse, 
an  attenuated  crescent,  not  a  fully  rounded 
orb. 

When  woman  is  placed,  thus,  in  her  his- 
toric setting,  the  question  of  feminism  be- 
comes not  a  woman's  problem  but  a  race 
problem.  For  the  woman  question  is  the 
child  question,  and  the  child  question  is,  or 
should  be,  the  subject  of  paramount  impor- 
tance to  both  men  and  women.  The  woman 
question  becomes,  therefore,  of  supreme 
interest  to  humanity,  ranking  first  in  those 
problems  that  loom  largest  on  the  twentieth 
century  horizon. 

Nor  may  this  vital  subject  be  compre- 
hended while  it  is  still  regarded  in  the  light 
of  sex,  only.  In  the  great  changes  of  modern 
life  the  position  of  woman  has  become  not 
a  sex  but  a  social  question — a  question 
of  how  best  to  utilize  to  social  advantage 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   13 

woman's  liberated  energies.  He  who  still 
considers  woman  as  an  individual  in  her  re- 
lationship to  man  alone — after  the  manner 
of  certain  novelists  upon  whose  sensitive 
souls  the  undigested  woman  question  lies 
heavily — must  necessarily  regard  her  with 
sex  predominant.  Scientific  sociology  for- 
bids this  exclusive  view.  To  comprehend 
the  woman  question  fully  one  must  also  con- 
sider woman  in  her  relationship  to  society, 
with  its  multifarious,  complex  demands. 

The  true  banner  bearers  of  the  woman's 
movement  are  women  who,  for  the  most 
part,  have  fulfilled  themselves  as  wives  and 
mothers  and  who  are  now  fulfilling  them- 
selves still  further  in  some  form  of  socially 
productive  work.  Such  women  embody  the 
true  meaning  of  feminism:  mental  and 
spiritual  advancement.  They  do  not  decry 
sex.  They  are  too  sane  and  too  human. 
Neither  do  they  unnecessarily  extol  it  nor 
acknowledge  its  so-called  "limitations."  If 
women  in  the  past,  they  would  argue,  when 
famihes  were  large,  could  still  fulfill  them- 
selves as  industrial  workers,  when  the  labor 


14.       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

of  the  world  was  cruelly  manual,  and  woman 
bore  the  lion's  share — surely  woman  to-day 
can  fulfill  herself  as  mother  and  world 
worker,  when  the  family  is  reduced  and  work 
has  become  largely  mechanical  or  clerical. 
The  woman's  movement  includes  sex  but  is 
not  limited  by  it. 

Above  all,  the  woman  question  is  not 
one  of  sex  antagonism,  as  a  few  ultrafemin- 
ists  charge.  No  movement  in  history  has 
ever  made  for  so  profound  sex  unit}^  since 
the  aim  of  feminism  is  to  place  humanity  on 
a  more  equitable  and  unifying  plane.  The 
interests  of  men  and  women  are  equal  and 
indissoluble:  race  guardianship  and  preser- 
vation. The  opportunities  must  also  be 
equal.  One  might  as  well  talk  of  antagonism 
between  wave  and  tide,  or  moon  and  star. 
Fortunately  the  deep-seated  law  of  attrac- 
tion between  men  and  women  is  potent 
enough  to  offset  any  antagonism,  fancied 
or  real. 

How  do  we  judge  this  subject  of  primary 
racial  importance?  Do  we  view  it  in  the 
light  of  pure  reason  and  applied  science? 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   16 

The  very  strength  of  our  interest  forbids. 
It  is  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  two 
thirds  of  the  world  consider  the  woman 
question,  not  according  to  reason  and  logic, 
but  from  the  mists  of  individual  prejudice 
and  an  inherited  bias. 

Yet  because  of  its  very  gravity  no  other 
problem  so  challenges  the  impersonal,  scien- 
tific mind.  No  question  is  regarded  seriously, 
to-day,  that  will  not  sm*vive  the  scientific 
test.  Scientific  formula  is  applied  in  every 
direction,  from  the  efficiency  of  the  brick- 
layer to  the  method  of  the  college  professor, 
but  not  to  the  woman  question.  A  woman- 
hood evolving,  according  to  well-established 
laws,  from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  from  the 
simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous,  is  not  yet 
considered,  except  in  rare  instances,  a 
normal,  scientific  growth. 

In  the  average  mind,  wherein  hes  the  sup- 
posed menace  of  feminism?  Analyzed, 
would  it  not  read  thus :  if  woman  be  allowed 
unlimited  freedom  to  expand  and  to  enter 
all  channels  of  creative  activity,  will  she 


16       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

not  neglect  the  most  fundamental  part  of 
her  nature,  motherhood,  or  at  least  disregard 
the  more  than  precious  blood  of  her  blood 
and  bone  of  her  bone? 

This  view  of  the  question  is  supremely 
important.  But  it  is  a  material  view  and  as 
such  only  partial.  For  herein  lies  the  crux 
of  the  misunderstood  woman  question:  it 
is  usually  regarded  in  its  material  aspect, 
whereas  the  woman's  movement,  in  its  orig- 
inal essence,  is  spiritual.  It  is  an  inner 
revolution  before  it  is  an  outer  revolt,  sub- 
jective before  objective.  All  the  recent  un- 
precedented activities  of  women  have  been 
but  manifestations  of  this  inner  quickening. 
Arising  from  interior  necessity,  they  are  but 
symbols  of  a  spiritual  revolution  sweeping 
the  sisterhood  of  the  earth.  They  are  the 
result  of  cause  and  effect,  of  action  and  re- 
action on  a  psychic  plane.  Any  view  less 
comprehensive  than  this  spiritually  inclusive 
view  is  superficial,  and  therefore  imperfect. 

What  occasioned  the  feminist  movement? 
Throughout  the  ages  the  life  of  woman, 
from  evolutionary  necessity,  was  one  of  hard 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   17 

labor,  almost  exclusively  physical.  Before 
woman  could  develop  psychically  it  was 
necessary  that  she  should  first  be  freed  from 
the  obligation  of  the  world's  drudgery.  The 
invention  of  machinery  was  the  real  emanci- 
pator of  woman's  spiritual  energies,  bestow- 
ing an  unprecedented  leisure.  The  privi- 
leges of  the  higher  education,  granted  in 
the  middle  of  the  last  century,  awoke  the 
feminine  brain  cell  and  released  woman's 
intellectual  faculties.  For  the  primitive 
occupations  of  woman,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, while  absorbing  her  complete  atten- 
tion, did  not  directly  exercise  or  develop 
her  mind.  There  was  no  specific  training 
of  the  feminine  intellect.  The  projecting 
cause  of  the  woman's  movement,  then,  was 
a  stimulated  mentality. 

Admitting  that  the  woman's  movement 
has  arisen  from  the  compulsion  of  newly 
awakened  powers,  what  do  the  terms  mental 
and  spiritual  expansion  for  women  imply? 
Do  they  embrace  qualities  of  practical  race 
value  ?  Or  do  they  signify  the  mystical,  the 
visionary,  and  the  unreal? 


18       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

Considering  mental  enlargement  for 
women — does  feminism  aim  to  make  an  in- 
tellectual Amazon  of  the  future  woman? 
Freedom  of  mental  opportunity  has  not 
thus  abnormally  transformed  man.  All  that 
can  be  claimed  for  man  is  that  widespread 
educational  opportunity — long  confined  to 
the  nobility  and  the  clergy — has  raised  the 
mental  average.  Can  we  not  endure  a  like 
elevation  of  the  sex  whose  average  mentality 
has  been  the  joke  of  the  ages? 

The  woman's  movement  is  teaching 
women  to  think  and  that  not  by  indirection. 
It  is  teaching  that  a  straight  hne  is  the 
shortest  distance  between  two  points,  even 
in  mental  measurement.  To-day,  if  a  woman 
meditates  a  journey  across  the  continent  of 
Thought  she  need  not  drift,  as  heretofore, 
around  Cape  Horn.  She  may  go  straight 
from  New  York  to  San  Francisco.  This  is 
great  gain,  not  only  for  woman  but  for  the 
race.  For  the  value  of  human  efficiency  is 
now  measured  by  the  ability  to  think  in  a 
given  line.  All  the  long-established  out- 
lets for  woman's  energy,  from  housework 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   19 

to  child-rearing,  may  be  improved  by  a 
responsive,  well-organized  mind;  while  the 
newer  activities — office  and  shopwork,  re- 
quiring concentration  and  alertness — are 
absolutely  dependent  upon  mental  develop- 
ment and  control. 

Mental  expansion  for  women,  then,  im- 
plies a  higher  average  of  trained  intelligence 
unfolding  normally  into  all  lines  of  human 
activity,  not  only  where  a  certain  accuracy 
of  thought  is  required,  but  also  where  suc- 
cess depends  absolutely  upon  the  efficiency 
and  initiative  there  attained. 

To  define  spiritual  expansion  becomes  far 
more  difficult  since  we  find  ourselves  in  the 
realm  of  the  abstract  rather  than  the  con- 
crete. Perhaps  no  phrase  in  the  English 
language  is  more  misinterpreted  than  the 
phrase,  "The  life  of  the  spirit."  Belonging 
to  the  unseen,  we  do  not  yet  recognize  its 
relationship  to  the  seen.  Itself  immaterial, 
we  do  not  yet  grasp  its  value  materially. 
Invested  almost  entirely  with  the  idea  of 
religion,  of  the  mystic  and  supernatural,  the 
life  of  the  spirit  has  been  dismissed  by  the 


20       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

practical  as  good,  possibly,  for  priests,  for 
dreamers,  for  women,  but  not  for  strong 
human  beings  with  coursing  red  corpuscles. 
Yet  modern  metaphysicians  tell  us  that  the 
life  of  the  spirit  is  as  real  as  flesh  and  blood 
and  doubly  important  since  it  dominates 
the  physical. 

It  is  true  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  the 
God-life.  To  worship,  however,  is  but  one 
of  its  functions.  The  life  of  the  spirit  is  also 
the  life  of  the  imagination,  without  which 
there  could  be  no  conception  of  Deity.  To 
originate  is  its  high  mission.  Consciously  or 
unconsciously  it  becomes  the  motive  power 
of  character,  of  vocation,  of  destiny.  The 
life  of  the  spirit  must,  therefore,  be  widened 
to  include  the  Hfe  of  the  imagination,  of 
creative  gifts  and  capacities.  No  invention, 
no  work  of  art,  no  great  business  enterprise, 
but  must  first  have  its  spiritual,  imaginative 
prototype.  The  cultivation  of  the  imagina- 
tion becomes,  thus,  of  the  highest  practicality 
since  upon  its  recognition  depend  all  kinds 
and  all  degrees  of  success.  The  life  of  the 
spirit,  instead  of  being  supernatural,  be- 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   21 

comes,  in  reality,  the  supreme  expression  of 
the  natural — not  yet  understood. 

The  term,  "the  spiritual  awakening  of 
woman,"  then,  does  not  denote  the  religious 
awakening  of  woman,  though  a  higher  form 
of  rehgion  is  necessarily  a  part  of  it.  It 
signifies  a  womanhood  moving  irresistibly 
toward  this  highest  realm  of  existence — the 
exercise  of  creative  imagination — a  move- 
ment absolutely  essential  for  symmetrical 
racial  development  if  humanity  is  to  utiUze 
all  its  creative  possibiUties. 

From  this  spiritually  creative  realm 
women,  by  the  necessity  of  past  material 
obligations,  have  been  almost  entirely  de- 
barred. N^o  sex  is  responsible  for  this  in- 
hibition. Evolution  is  responsible.  In  the 
estabhshment  of  civilization  it  was  impera- 
tive that  material  foundations  should  be  laid 
first.  And  women  have  been  the  pile  drivers 
of  the  race. 

Does  this  belated  unfolding  of  feminine 
creative  faculty  indicate  that  the  magic  of 
feminism  is  somehow  to  transform  every 
woman  into  an  embryonic  genius?    Not  at 


22       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

all.  It  is  not  probable  that  genius,  in  the 
future,  will  be  more  common  among  women 
than  among  men.  That  the  time  has  arrived 
when  it  will  be  increasingly  recognized  and 
encouraged  may  not  be  doubted.  Not  every 
one  is  gifted  with  creative  imagination,  but 
some  kind  of  imagination  is  an  original 
endowment  with  all.  There  is  a  perceptive 
and  receptive  endowment,  capable  of  wide 
cultivation  through  intimacy  with  high 
standards,  as  well  as  the  less  general  crea- 
tive genius.  The  spiritual  awakening  of 
women  will  have  its  most  direct  racial  results 
in  a  keener  recognition  of  genius  in  the 
young  and  a  more  widespread  appreciation 
of  its  value  to  society. 

What  the  race  has  lost  from  centuries  of 
undeveloped  imagination  in  mothers  can 
never  be  computed.  To  consider  the  effect 
of  a  quickened  maternal  imagination,  re- 
acting upon  the  mind  of  the  child,  opens 
vistas  dazzling  to  human  possibility.  And 
this,  not  alone  through  heredity,  but  through 
a  more  intelligent  comprehension  of  the 
child  mind. 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   23 

The  misunderstood  child  forms  no  little 
part  of  the  misunderstood  woman  question. 
How  often  a  youthful  imagination — a  small 
human  dynamo — has  had  its  natural  abilities 
checked  through  lack  of  a  maternal  faculty 
capable  of  recognizing  power  and  directing 
it.  Only  imagination  recognizes  imagina- 
tion. Spirit  only  sympathizes  with  spirit, 
and  by  intelligent,  loving  cooperation  guides 
its  natural  aspirations. 

The  imagination  of  the  child  is  the  pass- 
port to  its  future.  Upon  this  passport  de- 
pends the  country  the  child  is  to  enter.  Or 
again,  the  imagination  of  the  child  is  like  a 
bird  with  untried  wings.  If  the  mother  be 
unable  to  recognize  them,  except  for  pur- 
poses of  millinery;  if  she  be  ignorant  of  the 
first  principles  of  flight,  the  small  pinions 
may  never  be  unfolded.  The  spiritual  com- 
prehension of  the  mother  is  a  great  factor 
in  determining  whether  the  child  is  to  creep 
through  life  or  to  soar.  Many  a  vocational 
misfit  might  thus  be  avoided,  and  an  enor- 
mous percentage  of  human  waste  be  saved. 

Comprehended,  then,  as  the  hberation  of 


24       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

woman's  mental  and  spiritual  energies  for 
racial  advantage — is  the  woman's  movement 
scientific?  That  is,  does  it  run  counter  or 
parallel  to  established  ideas  of  human 
growth? 

To  do  any  logical  thinking  we  are  told 
that  we  must  think  in  terms  of  the  control- 
ling scientific  thought  of  the  age.  As  is  well 
known,  the  scientific  principle  of  to-day  is 
the  one  of  evolutionary  development — that 
the  species,  acted  upon  by  heredity  and  en- 
vironment, is  constantly  passing  through 
certain  organic  variations  and  adaptations. 
Without  knowledge  of  this  widespread  law, 
himian  crafts  have  little  perception  of 
whence  they  came  or  whither  they  are  going. 
Evolution  becomes  thus  more  than  a  com- 
pass.    It  is  a  mariner's  chart  for  life. 

Comparatively  recently  this  principle  has 
taught  us  that  nothing  is  fixed  and  station- 
ary, as  we  once  amazingly  believed,  but  that 
all  things  are  moving,  dynamic,  being  con- 
stantly acted  upon  by  attractions  from 
within  and  without. 

Darwin  traced  the  law  patiently  through 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   25 

the  tireless  formation  of  species.  Herbert 
Spencer  applied  it  to  government,  to  educa- 
tion, to  marriage,  and  to  religion,  showing 
that  human  institutions,  too,  are  not  fixed 
and  final,  but  are  fluid,  plastic,  still  in  the 
making.  Karl  Marx  fitted  the  development 
theory  to  the  evolution  of  industry,  foretell- 
ing, as  only  the  man  of  science  who  deals 
with  law  may  foretell,  the  great  industrial 
combinations  of  to-day.  And  Buckle,  in  his 
monumental  fragment  of  generalization, 
successfully  applied  the  idea  to  the  growth 
of  English  civilization. 

We  are  generously  willing  to  admit  the 
working  of  this  imiversal  law  in  all  these 
directions.  Only  over  the  heads  of  women 
do  our  affections,  ever  blinding  our  interests, 
inscribe,  "Thou,  and  thou  only,  must  not 
change."  The  habit  of  ages  is  against  our 
possessing  sufficient  elasticity  to  allow  even 
natural  law  to  work,  without  protest,  in  the 
mothers  of  men. 

But  is  natural  law  unnatural  only  where 
women  are  concerned?  Is  science  not  science 
in  conjunction  with  mothers  only?    Is  evo- 


26       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

lution  going  off  at  a  tangent  in  women? 
We  may  answer  only  by  learning  what  direc- 
tion it  has  taken  in  man.  Women  are  the 
other  half  of  the  same  species. 

We  know  that  the  variety  of  man's  experi- 
ences has  been  the  instigator  of  his  progress. 
He  has  grown  in  proportion  as  he  has  exer- 
cised new  functions,  new  abilities,  daring  to 
enter  new  fields.  To  the  privilege  of  mi- 
restricted  range  man  owes  his  supremacy  as 
world  builder  and  master. 

The  history  of  woman  reveals  a  creature 
specialized  almost  entirely  to  one  set  of  in- 
terests. From  such  specialization  we  should 
not  expect  versatility  nor  complete  expres- 
sion. 

In  point  of  developed  mentality  and  exer- 
cise of  the  imagination,  woman  is  far  behind 
man.  With  woman,  evolution  has  only  just 
begun  the  conscious  unfolding  of  the  psychic. 
But  it  has  begun.  The  same  law  is  at  work. 
Conditions  at  last  permit.  Racial  advance 
demands  it.  The  barque  of  womanhood, 
bearing  the  sacred  freight  of  the  children  of 
the  future,  is  turned  in  the  same  general 


THE  MISUNDERSTOOD  QUESTION   27 

direction  of  creative  evolution  as  that  of 
man.  Together  they  sail  on  the  same  seas, 
moving  toward  the  same  goal — the  port  of  a 
spiritually  perfected  race. 

The  woman's  movement,  running  thus 
parallel  with  accepted  laws  of  human 
growth,  and  not  counter  to  them,  is  distinc- 
tively scientific.  Viewed  in  the  light  of 
human  evolution,  with  its  steady  push  from 
the  physical  to  the  mental,  from  the  mental 
to  the  spiritual,  the  feminist  movement  takes 
its  place  logically  in  the  sequence  of  the 
development  of  the  human  family.  In  cos- 
mic history  it  is  of  all  events  the  most 
significant  and  far-reaching. 

To  those  of  us  who  sit  at  the  feet  of  science 
and  still  retain  the  old  faith  in  expanded 
form,  this  spiritual  development  of  the  race 
seems  a  not  impossible  ideal.  In  fact  any 
lesser  goal  is  insufficient.  Life  on  the  mate- 
rial side,  merely,  fails  to  satisfy.  We  are 
bom  for  spiritual  adventure,  true  sailors, 
not  of  the  wave  but  of  the  soul. 

Considered  thus  in  its  spiritual  interpre- 
tation, alone,  may  the  misunderstood  woman 


28       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

question  be  comprehended.  It  is  then  recog- 
nized as  constructive,  not  destructive,  in 
character.  To  recapitulate:  the  woman 
question  is  not  an  isolated  question,  but  a 
related  question.  It  is  not  a  woman  problem ; 
it  is  a  race  problem.  It  is  not  a  sex  question 
only — ^it  is  social.  Above  all  it  is  not  mate- 
rial; it  is  spiritual — a  loosening  of  the  psy- 
chically creative  forces  of  women  for  race 
advancement.  As  such  it  follows  the  general 
trend  of  all  human  development  on  the  three 
planes  of  being:  body,  mind,  and  spirit,  and 
becomes  scientific.  It  is  not  making  for 
sex  antagonism,  but  for  deeper  sex  unity. 
Its  influence  is,  therefore,  not  baneful  but 
beneficent.  Its  object  is  not  race  confusion 
but  race  completion.  With  far  higher  as- 
pirations than  women  were  capable  of  ful- 
filling in  the  past,  it  is  developing  a  far 
higher  type  of  motherhood  than  the  world 
has  ever  known.  It  is  Nature's  own  move- 
ment. To  misunderstand  and  try  to  check 
it  is  not  only  to  retard  the  cause  of  woman, 
but  also  to  retard  the  spiritual  .advancement 
of  mankind. 


THE  CREATIVE  AWAKENING 


CHAPTER  II 

Woman  and  Genius 

Monsieur  Goncourt  once  said:  "There 
are  no  women  of  genius.  The  women  of 
genius  are  all  men."  Fifty  years  ago  this 
statement  was  largely  true.  To-day  it  is 
questionable,  and  in  the  expanding  possibili- 
ties of  the  future  it  is  hkely  to  be  increas- 
ingly doubted.  The  genius  of  women  is 
beginning  to  unfold  in  every  land. 

Twenty-five  years  ago  the  Norwegian 
seer,  whose  prophetic  soul  perceived  the  com- 
ing revolution  in  its  most  subtle  aspects, 
said,  "The  women  are  knocking  at  the  door." 
To-day  that  door  has  swung  open,  and 
women  in  hungry  throngs  have  entered  the 
realm  of  the  arts,  the  sciences,  and  the  pro- 
fessions. 

In  denying  the  genius  of  women  in  the 
past  the  custom  has  obtained  of  comparing 
men  and  women  as  if  psychical  expansion 
had  been   simultaneous   with  them.     The 

SI 


S2       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

recent  revelations  of  science,  however,  have 
altered  the  point  of  view.  No  student,  to- 
day, would  dream  of  considering  the  cen- 
turies, critically,  through  the  eyes  of  the 
artist,  the  musician,  or  the  literary  man, 
merely.  To  wrench  the  secrets  from  the 
past  one  must  gaze  through  the  eyes  of  the 
biologist  and  the  sociologist.  Only  thus  may 
the  past  lack  of  developed  imagination  in 
women  be  clear  as  a  race  necessity,  or  the 
present  freeing  of  creative  energy,  with  its 
great  human  possibilities,  be  understood. 

To  the  sociologist  the  genius  of  the  early 
woman  was  expended  just  where  it  was  im- 
peratively needed:  in  civilization  building, 
in  family  construction.  For  this  gigantic 
task  all  woman's  energies,  poured  out  on  a 
material  plane,  were  unflinchingly  demanded 
and  given.  To  have  had  any  other  form  of 
genius  generally  expressed  at  an  earlier 
period  would  have  been  detrimental  to  race 
establishment.  The  greatness  of  the  early 
woman  lay  in  the  intense  devotion  of  her 
service  to  humanity.  Racially  she  was  al- 
ways great. 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  3S 

When  the  anthropoidal  hfe  became 
"man,"  to  aid  in  establishing  this  new,  crude 
species  two  obhgations  were  laid  upon 
woman:  first,  to  help  make  the  species  hu- 
man, and  second,  through  the  human  to 
attain  the  spiritual.  The  dark  ages  of  the 
subjection  of  woman  and  her  dependence 
upon  man  contributed  toward  the  first  neces- 
sity by  establishing  the  family  virtues.  The 
glory  of  to-day,  with  its  unusual  creative 
privileges,  is  her  opportunity  for  the  second. 

The  recrimination  of  one  sex  by  another 
for  past  transgressions  becomes,  therefore, 
superfluous.  In  the  light  of  evolution  there 
was  no  other  way.  Each  sex  did  its  best 
according  to  its  hght. 

To  the  scientist,  then,  woman  looms 
great  as  the  molder  of  family  life,  as  con- 
structor of  the  humanities.  There  is  genius 
enough  in  this  achievement  to  satisfy  the 
most  ardent  feminist,  while  as  a  foimdation 
for  future  greatness  it  is  a  priceless  heritage. 
For  the  basis  of  all  true  art  is  a  knowledge 
of  the  humanities.  The  woman  of  the  past 
instinctively  obeyed  nature's  call. 


84       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

What  is  not  generally  comprehended  in 
the  present  is,  as  has  been  noted,  that  the 
universal  awakening  of  woman  to-day, 
with  its  consequent  stirring  of  mentally 
creative  powers,  is  also  nature's  call  for 
race  advancement.  The  time  has  arrived 
when  mankind  requires  a  freer,  more  de- 
veloped womanhood;  when,  through  the 
agency  of  mechanical  invention  and  the 
smaller  family  that  is  considered  of  modern 
social  advantage,  all  the  energies  of  woman 
are  no  longer  required  upon  a  material 
plane;  when  spiritually  creative  qualities 
are  racially  the  most  desirable  to  be  devel- 
oped and  transmitted,  and  must  be  so  trans- 
mitted if  we  are  to  have  a  progressively 
evolving  posterity.  For  it  is  as  logical  as 
the  conclusion  of  a  mathematical  theorem :  a 
developed  imagination  in  the  mothers  must 
be  followed  by  a  developed  imagination  in 
the  race. 

What  proof  have  we  to  substantiate  the 
claim  that  the  woman's  movement  heralds 
the  awakening  of  the  imagination  of  woman  ? 
Immediately  some  skeptic — quite  as  hkely  a 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  35 

woman,  since  the  introduction  of  a  new  idea 
is  more  difficult  of  entrance  to  the  conserva- 
tive woman's  mind  than  to  the  man's — in- 
quires :  "Where  is  your  great  woman  genius, 
the  product  of  this  half-century  movement? 
Show  us  your  feminine  Phidias,  your  Dante, 
your  Raphael."  We  might  reply,  show  us 
their  antitypes  among  modern  men.  The 
facts  seem  to  indicate  that  every  age  pro- 
duces its  own  peculiar  type  of  genius,  and 
that  the  needs  of  the  age  determine  what 
the  character  of  the  genius  will  be. 

We  hear  frequently  that  the  Greek  in- 
tellect, the  Greek  art,  have  never  been 
equaled,  consequently  mankind  has  not  pro- 
gressed. It  is  not  likely,  nor  is  it  essential, 
that  a  period  of  its  kind  ever  will  be  sur- 
passed. It  gave  the  world  classic  standards, 
following  the  requirement  of  the  times.  The 
genius  of  to-day  is  none  the  less  great  be- 
cause it  creates  new  standards,  ministering 
to  new  requirements.  The  imagination  of 
a  Darwin,  that  weaves  an  epic  poem  from  a 
skull;  of  a  Marconi,  who  writes  his  messages 
on  the  skies ;  of  an  Edison,  who  uncoils  and 


S6       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

sets  in  motion  the  electric  currents  of  the 
earth,  is  none  the  less  great  because  different 
and  serving  the  needs  of  their  times. 

Can  we  match  these  modern  wizards  with 
the  names  of  women  proportionately  great? 
Happily  we  may,  though  the  genius  of 
woman  has  not  been  hberated  that  it  may 
enter  the  lists  with  man.  Not  for  sex  com- 
petition but  for  sex  completion  is  the  imag- 
ination of  woman  to  flower.  The  names 
of  three  women  suggest  themselves  as  show- 
ing that  order  of  creative  imagination  which 
"perceives  what  no  one  else  has  perceived" 
and  ministers  to  the  needs  of  the  times.  Two 
of  these  women  have  made  the  entire  race 
their  debtor.  The  first,  Madame  Montes- 
sori,  who  originated  a  system  that  in  time 
will  revolutionize  education — namely,  the 
development  of  the  intellect  through  the 
freeing  of  the  spirit  of  the  child.  Second, 
Madame  Curie,  codiscoverer  of  polonium  and 
radium,  the  only  human  being  who  has  twice 
won  a  Nobel  prize.  And  the  third,  Mary 
Baker  Eddy,  who,  no  matter  what  we  may 
think  of  her  propaganda,  did  what  no  woman 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  37 

in  any  other  age  could  have  done:  success- 
fully established  a  religious  cult  and  a  phi- 
losophy of  life. 

Too  much  should  not  yet  be  expected  of 
this  newborn  attribute  of  women  which  is 
flooding  schools  of  technical  training  and 
capturing  often  the  highest  awards.  As  yet 
it  is  a  crude  imagination.  It  has  all  the 
faults  and  all  the  rapture  of  youth.  But 
the  dew  of  spring  is  on  it  and  the  brightness 
of  the  morning.  It  has  put  a  new  light  in 
the  eye  of  woman,  a  new  hope  in  her  heart, 
for  to  her  soul  it  has  brought  that  bluebird 
of  happiness — the  joy  of  congenial  work — 
the  secret  of  eternal  youth. 

Behind  all  genius,  Emerson  tells  us,  lies 
intellect,  since  genius  is  intellect  construc- 
tive. Before  the  genius  of  woman  could 
function  it  was  necessary  that  the  intellect 
of  woman — so  little  in  evidence  that  it  was 
denied  existence  throughout  the  ages — 
should  be  aroused  and  trained.  The  gift  of 
education,  granted  spasmodically  at  different 
historic  periods,  was  not  a  universal  privi- 
lege until  sixty  years  ago — a  tick  of  the 


88       THE  AWAKENING  OP  WOMAN 

clock  on  eternity's  timepiece.  To  look  for  a 
high  order  of  genius  before  this  quickening 
of  the  feminine  brain  cell  is  folly.  The 
genius  that  occasionally  asserted  itself  in  the 
past  becomes  almost  superhuman  in  the 
light  of  the  obstacles  overcome.  The  ex- 
ceptions are  the  achievementi?  of  Hypatia  in 
science,  of  Aspasia  in  philosophy,  of  Sappho 
in  poetrj%  all  examples  of  the  exercise  of 
woman's  imagination  where  conditions,  for 
a  time,  in  a  veritable  Golden  Age,  were 
favorable  to  her  psychical  unfolding. 

It  is  frequently  affirmed  that  genius  makes 
its  own  opportunities.  An  examination  of 
creative  methods,  however,  indicates  that 
even  genius  must  have  its  favored  conditions. 
Briefly  considered,  what  were  the  require- 
ments of  masculine  genius  in  the  past? 

The  first  essential  was  singleness  of  pur- 
pose, devotion  to  an  idea.  Given  the  vision, 
men  have  passionately  lived  and  died  for  it. 

The  second  necessity  was  laborious  train- 
ing to  attain  mastery  of  technique. 

The  third_requirement  was  seclusion,  soli- 
tude, that  the  gi?t  might  bear  fruit.  Creative 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  39 

processes  are  silent.  One  must  listen  with 
the  inner  ear  to  the  spirit's  whisperings.  It 
is  true  that  inspiration  will  make  solitude 
anywhere.  Yet  inquire  of  a  brain  worker 
whether  his  genius  burns  brighter  in  the 
nursery  or  in  his  own  sanctum.  "Medita- 
tion means  something  growing,"  and  in 
quietness  do  all  things  grow.  Does  this  ex- 
plain the  magnetic  attraction  between  genius 
and  garrets  ?  How  many  a  masterpiece  has 
sprung  into  being  in  an  attic!  How  often 
has  a  materialistic  world  misjudged,  attrib- 
uting the  creation  to  the  poverty  rather  than 
to  the  seclusion  of  the  attic!  The  creative 
artist  creates  because  he  must,  to  save  his 
own  soul,  "genius  being  that  in  whose  power 
a  man  is." 

Serenity — freedom  from  carping  care — 
has  been  a  fourth  necessity  in  the  develop- 
ment of  genius.  This  does  not  imply  ex- 
emption from  those  great  cataclysms  of 
humanity — emotional  shocks  that  shatter 
and  send  the  rays  of  genius  soaring  still 
higher.  Sorrow  and  joy  are  heaven's  manna 
to  genius.    Rather  does  it  denote  freedom 


40       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

from  those  little,  soul-wearing  obligations 
against  which  Renan  protested  when  he  said, 
"My  dream  is  to  be  housed,  fed,  and  clothed 
without  having  to  think  about  it,  by  some 
one  who  will  take  care  of  me,  and  leave  me 
free." 

The  biographies  of  most  men  of  genius 
show  that  they  have  been  housed,  fed,  and 
clothed  and  left  free  by  some  one — ^gener- 
ally a  devoted  woman.  The  world  does  not 
always  know  of  the  sacrifice,  as  in  the  case 
of  Jane  Carlyle.  A  ewe  lamb  has  neverthe- 
less been  offered  on  the  altar  of  neariy^ev^y 
successful  genius. 

In  the  expression  of  genius,  we  see,  then, 
that  many  things  besides  the  original  endow- 
ment have  contributed.  If  we  apply  these 
requirements  to  the  woman  of  the  past  we 
perceive  how  Uttle  the  conditions  of  life  have 
allowed  her  to  meet  them. 

Singleness  of  purpose — how  would  the 
woman  of  early  times  have  fulfilled  this 
essential?  What  singleness  of  purpose,  ex- 
cept the  welfare  of  the  raw  thing  called 
humanity,    could   this    patient   mother   of 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  41 

countless  sacrificed  millions  possess?  She 
could  not  even  consider  the  impulse.  She 
would  have  been  forced  to  throttle  it,  as 
doubtless  often  she  did,  throwing  it  back 
into  the  glory  from  which  it  had  sprung. 

Time  to  perfect  her  gift?  The  burden 
bearer  of  the  ages  had  no  unoccupied  time. 
And  if  she  had  leisure,  where  could  she  have 
received  technical  training  since  training 
schools  for  women  did  not  exist  ?  Seclusion  ? 
No  woman  knew  the  meaning  of  soUtude, 
with  little  ones  always  at  her  breast  or  knee, 
even  while  she  toiled.  Serenity?  Where 
was  the  unselfish  man  to  stand  between  this 
servant  of  the  ages  and  the  world  to  see  that 
she  was  "fed,  clothed,  and  warmed  without 
having  to  think  about  it,"  leaving  her  spirit 
free  to  give  out  its  divine  message  ?  He  did 
not  exist,  and  in  the  light  of  sociology  we 
realize  at  last  the  blessing  that  he  did  not 
exist.  In  the  estabHshment  of  early  civiHza- 
tion  the  world  did  not  require  the  fruit  of 
woman's  mind  as  well  as  that  of  man's.  It 
required  the  fruit  of  her  body  and  of  her 
hands.    No  sex — no  man — muzzled  woman's 


42       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

genius.  A  stem  "Verbodden"  was  not 
written  over  the  sacred  temple  of  Art.  Life 
itself  prevented.  Conditions  forbade.  The 
modern  racial  requirements  of  hving  were 
not  yet  ripe. 

In  the  rare  examples  where  feminine 
genius  did  succeed  in  becoming  articulate, 
examination  proves  that  in  some  way  the 
ordinary  feminine  obligations  were  set  aside, 
and  the  requirements  of  genius  were  ful- 
filled. The  life  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing offers  a  striking  example.  Ill  health 
exempted  her  from  the  usual  feminine  tasks. 
An  ambitious  father  awoke  and  trained  her 
mind  in  classic  lore.  The  quiet  of  a  sick 
room  offered  seclusion  for  meditation.  By 
virtue  of  her  invalidism  the  essentials  for 
the  fruition  of  genius  were  realized  as  in 
her  solitary  sick  room  Elizabeth  Barrett 
communed  with  her  own  soul  and  gave  the 
world  immortal  results. 

A  striking  case  in  Hterary  history  also 
presents  itself  where  a  man  stood  between 
a  woman  and  the  demands  of  the  world. 
The  guardianship  of  George  Henry  Lewes 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  43 

over  the  genius  of  George  Eliot  offers 
an  example  of  a  man's  stimulating  devotion 
creating  the  environment  in  which  a  woman's 
gift  might  blossom. 

In  the  past,  if  the  push  of  a  woman's 
talent  did  break  through  the  conventional 
crust  of  ages,  she  became  an  object  of  scorn 
and  sought  in  every  way  to  cover  her  mis- 
deeds. 

Witness  the  gifted  Bronte  sisters.  All 
three  were  vibrant  with  creative  power.  To 
the  expression  of  the  gift  each  brought  a 
passionate  singleness  of  purpose.  Mental 
activity  was  trained  by  the  guiding  mind  of 
their  clergyman  father.  The  quiet  parson- 
age on  the  lonely  moors  offered  solitude  and 
serenity.  Yet  timidly,  under  the  protection 
of  masculine  pseudonyms,  like  veritable 
thieves  offering  pilfered  wares,  these  three 
sisters  presented  their  virile  works  to  the 
world.  In  short,  no  crime  was  ever  more 
carefully  concealed  than  the  fact  that  these 
extraordinary  women,  one  of  whom  was  to 
blaze  a  new  path  in  fiction,  had  developed 
genius  of  the  first  order. 


44.       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

What  indications  have  we  to-day  that  the 
conditions  of  hfe  are  at  last  favorable  to 
the  demand  for  the  freedom  of  the  feminine 
imagination?  The  servant  of  the  ages  may 
now  herself  be  served.  With  great  com- 
binations of  industry  to  minister  to  her,  with 
cooperative  methods  of  living,  with  gigantic 
products  of  garment-making  for  selection, 
almost  may  she  be  "housed,  clothed,  fed, 
and  warmed  without  having  to  think  about 
it,"  leaving  her  spirit  free  to  receive  impres- 
sions and  to  create. 

Does  the  world  need  the  creative  genius 
of  women  as  it  needs  that  of  men?  In  the 
complexities  of  modem  life,  the  world  needs 
all  inspirational  value  that  it  can  obtain — 
the  revelations  of  exceptional  women  as  well 
as  of  exceptional  men.  No  one  sex  possesses 
a  monopoly  of  truth.  Both  must  interpret 
it.  The  realm  is  inexhaustible,  therefore 
there  is  room  for  both. 

Upon  what  will  the  imfolding  of  feminine 
genius  depend?  Upon  the  same  power  on 
which  all  human  ability  depends:  upon  the 
development  of  the  imagination.    But,  some 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  46 

one  inquires,  is  not  imagination  a  special 
gift?  Is  it  something  that  may  be  culti- 
vated? No  one  accustomed  to  being  with 
little  children  could  question  the  possibility 
of  imagination  being,  on  the  start  of  life,  at 
least,  a  universal  endowment.  Children  are 
full  of  imagination.  Adults  lose  it.  What 
becomes  of  this  practical,  spiritual  gift, 
invaluable  to  the  human  family?  Education 
ignores  it.  The  rfmtipp  of  liffi  rmshrn  it. 
In  the  ledger  of  ^aily  events  it  is  entered 
on  the  side  of  enormous  waste.  We  have 
not  yet  learned  to  discern  real  human 
treasure. 

Economic  conditions  have  probably  done 
more  to  extinguish  genius  than  any  other 
direct  cause.  For  every  message  that  has 
been  given  to  the  world  in  spite  of  poverty, 
countless  inspirations  have  been  ruthlessly 
snuffed  out  because  of  it.  Many  an  illu- 
mined soul  has  been  exhausted  in  the 
twenties  or  thirties  by  the  material  fight 
for  food,  clothing,  and  shelter.  Witness 
Keats.  Stem  necessity  may  have  been  the 
impelling  power  in  certain  rugged  minds. 


46       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

It  has  been  the  gravedigger  in  myriads  with 
more  subtle  gifts. 

As  the  imagination  of  women  is  exercised 
and  developed  it  will  be  quicker  to  recognize 
creative  ability  and  so  to  environ  it  as  to 
prevent  these  tragedies  of  mute  genius.  As 
the  eflports  of  women  are  contributed  more  to 
society,  halving  the  world's  work,  the  grip 
of  the  economic  and  industrial  system  upon 
men  will  become  less  pressing.  A  new  per- 
spective will  be  given  to  the  importance  of 
spiritual  gifts.  First  things  will  then  be 
placed  first.  The  real  riches  of  the  earth 
will  be  seen  to  lie  in  the  spiritual  power 
of  its  creative  men  and  women.  Massenet 
said  that  he  could  compose  only  when  his 
spirit  was  rested.  To  conserve  the  energy 
of  these  creators  so  that  spiritual  force  may 
not  be  worn  fine  in  soulgrinding  struggles 
will  take  precedence  over  all  social  obliga- 
tions. 

Genius  is  supposed  to  be  unaware  of  its 
own  mysterious  methods,  creating  blindly 
because  it  must.  Yet  in  these  days  when 
the  impenetrable  is  photographed,  surely 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  47 

some  X-ray  of  thought  may  pierce  even  the 
baflBing  method  of  creative  processes.  As 
far  as  analysis  may  go  we  know  that  out  of 
the  infinite  mind  in  which  we  Hve  intuition 
flashes  ideas  to  the  imagination.  And  this 
we  call  inspiration.  The  imagination  then 
bathes  the  idea  in  the  emotions  and  decides 
on  its  technical  form.  And  this  we  call  Art. 
Intuition  and  the  emotions  become  thus  the 
handmaiden  of  the  imagination,  and  through 
this  of  the  arts. 

What  attribute  throughout  the  ages  has 
been  generously,  though  satirically,  conceded 
to  woman?  Not  reason.  Unthinking  beings 
do  not  reason.  Has  it  not  been  intuition — 
that  quality  facetiously  defined  as  the  thing 
a  woman  feels  when  she  is  wrong?  Right 
or  wrong,  until  recently,  she  has  had  to  steer 
by  it.  She  has  had  no  other  guide.  Hence 
the  intuition  of  woman  developed  to  an 
abnormal  degree. 

Emotional  capacity,  also,  has  never  been 
denied  woman  in  the  historical  or  hysterical 
past.  Emotion  banked  up  into  but  one  out- 
let of  expression — domesticity — ^might  well 


48       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

be  hysterical.  Yet  inherited  excess  of  emo- 
tion should  fertilize  rather  than  sterilize 
woman's  creative  power  and  endow  it  with 
a  hmnanness  peculiarly  its  own. 

We  see,  then,  that  even  as  the  derivation 
of  genius — "to  beget,  to  bring  forth" — is 
peculiarly  feminine,  so  the  most  striking 
characteristics  of  genius  are  also  woman's 
most  striking  characteristics.  Does  this  ex- 
plain why  many  masculine  geniuses  have 
been  noticeably  feminine  ?•  It  proves  at  least 
that  in  the  essential  quahties  of  genius  there 
is  nothing  foreign  to  the  feminine  tempera- 
ment. 

But  there-  remains  a  far  deeper  reason 
why  the  spiritual  insight  of  women  should 
be  embodied  in  concrete  form.  In  mother- 
hood, as  sculptor  of  humanity,  woman  rises 
to  the  supreme  height  of  creation — a  height 
that  only  one  sex  may  know.  Man,  the 
artist,  has  ever  been  impelled  to  depict 
woman,  the  Madonna — and  we  have  can- 
vases covered  with  flesh-and-blood  mothers, 
with  the  spirit  left  out.  When  woman,  the 
maternal,  at  last  registers  the  profundities 


WOMAN  AND  GENIUS  49 

of  her  peculiar  experience,  emphasizing  the 
psychic  character  of  motherhood,  humanity 
should  be  enriched  by  its  noblest  renaissance 
in  art.  The  fact  that  nature  has  given  to 
one  half  the  world  fundamental  spiritual 
revelations  that  are  denied  to  the  other  half, 
places  a  new  obligation  on  the  creatively 
awakened  woman.  The  ear  of  the  world  is 
listening  for  the  message  she  will  have  to 
utter. 


CHAPTER  III 

Why  a  Mentally  Creative  Womanhood 
IS  Desirable 

The  question  no  longer  is  relevant :  "Is  a 
mentally  creative  womanhood  desirable?"  as 
if  repression  were  within  the  bounds  of  pos- 
sibility. As  well  try  to  stem  Niagara  as  to 
suggest  crowding  woman  back  into  channels 
of  noncreative  activity.  The  facts  of  the 
case  are  that  feminism  has  opened  the  casket 
of  woman's  mental  treasures  and  the  precious 
gifts  within  have  escaped  on  wings.  For 
weal  or  woe  the  mind  of  woman  has  invaded 
almost  all  realms  of  the  constructive  imagin- 
ation; and  having  once  tasted  the  joys  of 
creation,  and  reaped  the  often  substantial 
rewards,  nothing  less  than  utter  annihilation 
can  restrain  its  expression. 

For  years  the  world  accepted  the  dictum 
of  certain  scientists  who  kindly  but  elab- 
orately explained  that  the  "germ  plasm  of 

50 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  51 

originality  was  lacking  in  the  feminine  brain 
cell."  For  centuries  this  statement  seemed 
true.  But  what  is  the  situation  to-day? 
Take  the  realm  of  invention,  for  instance — 
in  the  last  part  of  the  nineteenth  and 
first  part  of  the  twentieth  century  nearly 
ten  thousand  patents  were  taken  out  in  the 
United  States  by  women  alone — more  than 
in  the  whole  previous  record  of  the  patent 
office.  In  this  one  direction,  at  least,  a  very 
good  substitute  for  the  "germ  plasm  of 
originahty"  in  women  seems  to  be  actively 
at  work.  In  the  field  of  literature — ^the 
novel  and  the  short  story,  the  first  creative 
realm  to  be  invaded  by  large  numbers  since 
writing  is  supposed  to  "come  naturally"  and 
to  require  less  technical  training  than  the 
other  arts — the  golden  profits  of  popularity 
are  reaped  as  abundantly  by  women  as  by 
men.  In  the  drama  the  box  office  receipts  have 
been  increased  by  woman's  newly  escaped 
brain  cell,  from  Margaret  Mayors  gold- 
mine farce,  "Baby  Mine,"  which  convulsed 
two  continents  with  clean  feminine  humor, 
to  Josephine  Peabody's  poetic  drama,  "The 


52       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

Piper,"  which  captured  the  Shakesperian 
prize  of  $1,500  at  Stratford.  Note  also 
the  Winthrop  Ames  contest,  which  awarded 
$10,000  to  the  play,  "Children  of  Earth," 
by  Alice  Brown.  In  sculpture,  the  daily 
prints  abound  with  the  work  of  women 
sculptors  who  toil  for  the  love  of  the  work- 
ing. In  painting,  women  are  forging  to  the 
front  not  only  as  portrait  painters  and  illus- 
trators, but  as  mural  decorators  for  libraries 
and  municipal  buildings.  In  conservatories 
of  music  women  are  winning  prizes,  though 
music  is  the  most  abstract  of  the  arts,  and 
the  technicalities  are  the  most  difficult. 
And  the  wonder  is,  not  that  much  of  this 
flood  of  creative  effort  is  on  the  plane  of 
mildly  entertaining  mediocrity,  but  that  a 
saving  fraction  is  illimiinated  by  the  promise 
of  better  things  to  come. 

The  charge  has  been  made  that  through- 
out the  centuries  woman  has  been  "spirit- 
ually sterile";  and  as  far  as  the  expression 
of  imagination  is  concerned,  except  in  rare 
instances,  this  has  been  true.  Like  Margery 
Daw — there  wasn't  any.     Or  to  be  more 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  53 

exact,  the  imaginative  faculties  were  not  yet 
awakened.  But  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that 
woman  would  have  been  traitorous  to  the 
race  she  was  fostering  had  she  followed  the 
course  of  mentally  creative  activity  earlier. 
As  has  been  pointed  out,  the  gifts  that 
ancient  civilizations  demanded  of  women 
were  gifts  of  an  intensely  practical  nature, 
and  she  gave  them  royally  in  the  blood  and 
sinew  of  her  body  and  the  toiling  sweat  of 
her  brow.  Continual  childbearing  and  in- 
cessant manual  labor  were  her  portion.  His- 
torically, civilization  has  left  its  dark  period 
of  savage  emergence  from  physical  combat 
and  struggle  and  entered  a  new  era:  the 
period  of  mental  conquest — of  social  and 
spiritual  development.  In  this  modem 
period  of  psychical  activity  woman  has  her 
contributory  share  quite  as  important  as  in 
the  primitive  regime.  Only  the  character  of 
the  obligation  has  altered — not  the  obliga- 
tion. The  demand  to-day  is  that  woman 
should  be  spiritually  fertile,  psychically  fer- 
tile. For  the  first  time  in  history  the  duty 
of  woman  and  the  desire  of  woman  may 


54s       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

coincide.  She  may  discharge  her  racial  duty 
as  mother  creator,  and  still  fulfill  a  desire 
for  other  forms  of  creation.  She  not  only 
may  but  must,  if  progress  is  to  be  con- 
tinuous. 

It  is  important  that  the  fact  be  kept  in 
mind  that  the  power  behind  the  recent  crea- 
tive output  is  the  stimulating  force  of  newly 
aroused  emotional  and  intellectual  faculties 
and  that  spiritual  awakening  always  pre- 
cedes imaginative  expression.  When  its 
origin  is  considered  it  will  be  seen  that  a 
womanhood,  awakened  in  its  highest  inner 
forces,  could  no  more  resist  creating  than  a 
seed  could  refrain  from  breaking  through 
its  shell. 

And  the  consequences?  They  are  not 
disquieting,  though  those  to  whom  appre- 
hension is  an  occupation  may  still  find  em- 
ployment. At  the  heart  of  things  dwells 
infinite  wisdom  neither  slumbering  nor  sleep- 
ing. The  main  result,  and  the  main  cause 
for  congratulation  that  at  last  we  have 
crossed  the  threshold  of  a  mentally  creative 
era  for  women,  is  that  whereas  in  the  past 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  55 

the  world  has  been  led  largely  by  the 
spiritual  ideals  of  men,  in  the  future  it  will 
be  led  by  the  spiritual  ideals  of  men  and 
women — and  be  richer  by  one  half. 

The  spiritual  awakening  of  woman,  then, 
indicates  that  woman  is  now  Hving,  or  may 
live,  with  the  full  expression  of  all  her  inner 
powers  instead  of  only  a  part.  The  house 
of  the  brain  is  a  many-roomed  mansion.  In 
her  long,  previous  condition  of  race  servi- 
tude, the  practical  activities  of  woman 
seldom  allowed  her  to  penetrate  above  the 
ground  floor.  Hers  is  now  the  joy  of  the 
explorer.  She  may  be  a  Columbus  to  her 
own  soul  and  mind.  Like  a  child  she  is 
running  curiously  from  cellar  to  cupola,  in- 
vestigating and  inhabiting  this  true  home  of 
all  humanity — the  wonderful  house  of  the 
brain.  Who  lives  in  only  a  part  of  this  man- 
sion is  but  a  lax  tenant.  To  be  human  im- 
plies living  in  all  one's  mental  apartments. 
This  alone  distinguishes  from  the  brute. 

While  a  human  being  living  at  the  full 
capacity  of  his  powers  is  the  accepted  stand- 
ard, it  must  be  admitted  that  it  is  a  plane 


56       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

to  reach  which  few  men  or  women  care 
to  make  the  effort.  There  is  mental  and 
spiritual  inertia,  as  well  as  physical  lassi- 
tude, to  be  overcome.  Human  nature,  for 
the  most  part,  prefers  its  necessary  rut  and 
follows  the  line  of  least  resistance.  We  are 
strangers  to  the  wonderful  possibilities  of 
our  own  endowment. 

When  the  novelty  of  being  allowed  a 
feminine  mind  with  permission  to  use  it  has 
worn  off,  it  is  unfortunately  not  likely  that 
the  average  woman  will  develop  an  ambition 
much  greater  than  the  average  man.  The 
residuum  of  great  women,  like  the  residuimi 
of  great  men,  will  probably  be  small.  Yet 
the  spiritual  minority  are  those  by  whom 
the  race  will  be  led. 

But  suppose  that  this  ghost  of  misappre- 
hension that  stalks  through  the  world  in  re- 
gard to  the  new  activities  of  women  were  to 
become  real — ^the  fear  that  somehow  the 
alchemy  of  modern  conditions  will  transform 
every  woman  into  that  rare  type,  the  un- 
usual woman,  and  so  lure  her  to  neglect  of 
physical  function;  suppose,  even,  that  she 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  57 

develop  genius  ?  Would  the  desire  to  create 
on  a  spiritual  plane  rather  than  physiological 
plane,  merely,  enrich  or  impoverish  the  race? 
Would  it  still  be  desirable  for  this  woman  to 
live  up  to  her  highest  inner  impulsion? 

The  treasure  of  the  world  lies  in  its  store- 
house of  spiritual  truths,  messages  that  still 
come  from  the  burning  bush  and  from  the 
wilderness.  Revelations  are  not  outgrown. 
Decalogues  are  still  being  written,  parables 
unfolded.  By  these  truths  the  vast  propor- 
tion of  humanity  that  has  not  yet  learned  to 
receive  its  revelations  directly  is  admonished 
and  led.  When  an  ethical  genius  of  this 
character  appears — and  the  transcendent 
genius  is  always  ethical — it  matters  little 
whether  the  instrument  be  a  man  or  a 
woman.  The  vital  point  is  the  message  for 
a  needy  world. 

Society  to-day  demands  service  of  each 
individual.  Somewhat  of  one's  self  each  one 
must  contribute  to  the  social  machinery — or 
be  a  clog  in  the  wheel.  A  few  persons  con- 
tribute ideas — and  these  are  the  world's 
saviours.     The  majority  give  themselves  in 


58       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

some  form  of  productive  labor — and  they 
are  the  indispensable  warp  and  woof  of  the 
social  fabric.  All  are  supposed  to  con- 
tribute an  improved  grade  of  children,  that 
physical  progress  may  not  halt. 

In  the  first  group — the  people  who  con- 
tribute ideas — if  the  ideas  be  large  enough, 
valuable  enough  to  all  mankind,  we  consider 
embodying  those  ideas  in  concrete  form  to 
be  imperative.  No  phase  of  human  endeavor 
exists  that  the  emotions  of  parenthood  will 
not  enrich.  But  in  those  rare  cases  of  uni- 
versal spiritual  profit  the  highest  loyalty 
to  the  world  and  to  the  individual  remains 
to  bring  forth  and  perfect  ideas. 

If  the  man  of  genius  be  faithful  to  his 
gift;  if  with  travail  of  soul  he  begets  the 
children  of  his  vision,  we  exonerate  him  from 
the  commonly  accepted  racial  duty.  Could 
anyone  claim  that  Spencer  would  have 
served  his  age  better  by  fathering  a  dozen 
children  than  by  contributing  his  "First 
Principles"  ?  Would  a  galaxy  of  little  Car- 
rols  have  permanently  delighted  the  reading 
world  as  the  immortal  "Alice"?     No  one 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  59 

disputes  the  prerogative  of  a  Plato,  a  Kant, 
or  a  Swedenborg  to  be  celibate.  Can  we 
not  grant  the  privilege  of  the  same  choice  of 
life  to  women  when  driven  by  inner  necessi- 
ties? Did  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  discharge 
a  higher  duty  in  begetting  a  family  than  in 
writing  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"?  Was  Mrs. 
Browning's  beloved  son  as  great  a  world 
contribution  as  "The  Sonnets  from  the 
Portuguese"?  Which  creation  could  society 
best  afford  to  spare? 

Whether  the  expression  of  genius  be 
"masculine  or  feminine,"  then,  the  spiritual 
heritage  of  women  as  well  as  men  is  needed 
and  the  creative  faculties  should  be  equally 
encouraged  to  function.  Neither  sex  has  a 
monopoly  of  vision.  Ideas,  hke  children, 
should  not  be  stillborn. 

But  suppose  that  we  are  willing  to  admit 
hurdling  the  obstacle  of  fear  of  the  rare 
woman  of  genius  developing  her  gift,  ac- 
knowledging even  the  possibility  that  the 
race  might  be  stimulated  by  the  infusion  of 
woman's  inspiration  as  well  as  man's — there 
remains  the  question  of  the  average  woman. 


60       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

Is  an  average  womanhood,  mentally  devel- 
oped and  exercised  as  the  woman's  move- 
ment aims  to  develop  and  exercise  the  brain 
of  woman,  a  menace  or  an  advantage  to 
posterity?  In  short,  if  the  average  woman 
be  allowed  complete  latitude  to  energize  in 
a  mental  sphere,  will  she  retain  sufficient 
vitality  to  energize  in  a  physiological  sphere, 
also? 

The  amount  of  energy  in  all  things,  physi- 
cists tell  us,  remains  constant.  It  may  be 
transformed,  as  when  coal  becomes  steam. 
Its  form  varies,  but  its  value  remains  the 
same. 

Every  individual  possesses  an  inherent 
amount  of  energy  to  be  wisely  used  and  con- 
served, or  to  be  dissipated  and  rendered 
valueless.  Certain  alarmists,  who  view  the 
horizon  in  part,  and  whose  narrowed  eye- 
lids do  not  perceive  the  entire  sweep  of 
changed  world  conditions,  observe  a  uni- 
versal racial  tendency  to  a  lowered  birth  rate 
in  highly  civilized  countries;  and  without 
analyzing  causes  they  cry  "race  degenera- 
tion," announcing  the  fact  that  women  are 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  61 

expending  their  energies  on  planes  other 
than  motherhood  as  the  explanation. 
/  As  already  stated,  the  energy  of  women 
always  has  been  expended  on  other  planes. 
If  it  had  not  been,  man  would  not  find  him- 
self at  that  proud  pinnacle  of  intellectual 
supremacy  where  he  now  stands.  Without 
the  manual  labor  of  women  there  could  have 
been  no  such  hberal  mental  development  for 
him.  In  the  days  when  woman  energized  to 
the  extent  of  an  average  of  eight  children 
she  was  not  exempt  from  working  also  as 
the  pack  horse  of  humanity.  At  no  period 
of  the  world's  history  could  man  have  spared 
woman,  either  as  originator  of  industry  or 
as  coworker  with  him,  to  specialize  on 
motherhood  alone.   ) 

As  in  the  past,  when  families  were  large, 
not  all  of  the  energies  of  women  were  spent 
in  motherhood,  but  some  went  into  vital 
labor,  so  to-day — with  the  reduced,  more 
highly  developed  family  and  the  changed 
and  vastly  improved  conditions  of  modem 
life — all  woman's  energies  are  not  consumed 
in  child-rearing.     Even  if  woman  herself 


62       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

were  willing,  society  would  not  permit. 
Society,  at  an  enormous  expense  per  capita, 
places  the  child  at  an  early  age  in  the  hands 
of  trained  educators.  Theoretically,  we  do 
not  believe  in  the  separation  of  mother  and 
child.  Practically,  this  is  the  condition  that 
exists.  School  occupies  the  morning  hours, 
outdoor  play  the  afternoon.  Many  schools 
now  provide  luncheons  for  children — with  a 
decided  improvement  in  nourished  bodies 
and  brains.  A  plan  is  also  being  considered, 
suggested  by  the  Gary  idea  of  combining 
"work,  study,  and  play,"  to  annex  play- 
grounds, keeping  the  children  all  day,  that 
play  may  be  supervised,  under  the  right  con- 
ditions, and  made  as  wholesome  as  work, 
since  it  is  recognized  that  most  of  the  evil  in 
childhood  is  learned  in  the  streets. 

In  the  Brushwood  Boy — that  glimpse 
into  spiritual  dominions — the  mother  con- 
tinued the  custom  of  tucking  her  son  into  bed 
even  when  he  returned  as  an  officer;  a  habit, 
Kipling  tells  us,  that  must  be  maintained  if 
the  empire  is  to  be  preserved.  In  the  ac- 
tivities imposed  upon  the  modem  male,  the 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  63 

curfew  hour,  alas!  is  often  the  only  hour  in 
which  the  mother  is  permitted  this  sweet 
communion.  Fortunately,  it  is  the  best  time 
for  the  exchange  of  confidences,  for  the 
strengthening  of  human  ties,  and  for  the 
forging  of  permanent  spiritual  bonds. 

During  the  daily  absence  of  husband  and 
children  a  woman  may  now  energize  in 
housework  or  some  more  congenial  occupa- 
tion outside  the  home.  The  home  will  not 
depart  from  the  house  because  the  woman 
leaves  it.  Home  consists  of  the  quahty  of 
spirit  diffused  when  the  family  is  reunited. 
The  important  thing  to  preserve  is  the  buoy- 
ancy of  the  mother's  spirit,  that  she  may  not 
be  too  exhausted  from  work,  whatever  its 
character,  to  give  of  her  inner  forces  to  hus- 
band and  children  when  they  return.  This 
attribute  of  light-hearted  gladness  in  the 
mother  is  the  true  home  cheer  and  the  most 
precious  memory  of  after  life.  Excessive 
social  engagements  may  exhaust  the  mother's 
vitality  quite  as  much  as  excessive  house- 
work or  ofiice  toil.  For  some  temperaments 
there  is  no  more  nerve-racking  preparation 


64       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

for  a  joyous  home  reunion  than  several  hotly 
contested  rubbers  of  bridge. 

It  is  right  that  every  step  of  the  way  of 
woman's  new  expenditures  should  be  meas- 
ured by  their  effect  upon  motherhood. 
Above  all  others  this  is  the  criterion  to  be 
considered.  It  is  also  fair  that  the  corre- 
sponding changes  in  the  output  of  all  energy 
should  be  observed  as  well  as  woman's 
changed  relationship  to  industry  and  to 
social  life.  It  is  then  seen  that  woman  and 
labor  are  no  more  divorced  than  woman  and 
motherhood. 

The  truth  about  energy  seems  to  be  that 
every  individual  is  a  dynamo  possessing  not 
only  a  fixed  amount  of  physical  force,  but  a 
potential  amount  of  mental  energy  also,  and 
that  the  one  needs  exercising  quite  as  much 
as  the  other.  We  all  know  this  truth  but 
persistently  fail  to  practice  it.  The  man  of 
letters  becomes  pale  from  the  excessive  exer- 
cise of  his  intellect.  A  woman  may  glow 
like  a  rose  from  athletics,  yet  be  withered  at 
the  top  from  an  undeveloped  mind.  Only 
an  occasional  Maeterlinck  or  a  Gladstone 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  65 

embodies  the  double  power  of  exercising 
both  the  mental  and  the  physical  powers. 
Hence,  the  difficulty  in  later  life,  either  of 
using  certain  muscles  or  of  making  new 
brain  paths,  and  the  utter  impossibihty,  in 
some  minds,  "of  hospitality  to  a  new  idea." 

To  those  who  would  still  keep  the  iron  heel 
of  convention  on  woman's  progress,  believ- 
ing sincerely  in  the  continued  restriction 
of  her  sphere,  it  has  been  pointed  out  that, 
physiologically,  child  rearing  occupies  only 
about  one  third  of  a  woman's  life.  She  may 
energize  conscientiously  as  a  mother,  find- 
ing herself  a  grandmother  at  forty  with  a 
rich,  new  life  of  creative  activity  before  her ; 
or  she  may  find  herself  still  capable,  but  dis- 
carded on  society's  scrap  heap,  the  waste 
product  of  a  system  that  has  not  yet  learned 
to  employ  all  its  social  forces. 

Earl  Barnes  tells  us  that  the  unutilized 
energies  of  the  average  woman  of  middle 
life,  after  her  children  no  longer  need  her 
immediate  attention,  when  with  mature  ex- 
perience she  should  be  of  greatest  world 
value,  is  one  of  society's  inexcusable  wastes. 


66       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

From  this  loss  arises  the  problem  of  "the 
woman  with  the  empty  hands." 

Which  shall  it  be  for  the  still  young 
matron  whose  children  are  out  in  the  world, 
undergoing  training  from  modern  specialists 
whom  no  one  mother  could  possibly  rival — 
real  work,  or  fictitious  busy-ness — a  potent 
social  force  or  an  effete  has-been?  This 
problem  looms  large  as  the  specter  of 
feminine  middle  life. 

To  grow  old  serviceably  and  let  the  grace- 
fully take  care  of  itself,  that  is  the  true  ideal. 
Only  in  the  complete  use  of  all  her  energies 
may  the  years  be  robbed  of  their  age-long 
enmity  to  the  woman  heart.  There  is  hope 
for  the  woman  of  advancing  years  when, 
instead  of  finding  herself  a  sere  and  yellow 
leaf,  she  becomes  a  social  oHve  branch ;  when 
instead  of  facing  society's  cold  shoulder, 
youth's  snubbings,  the  world's  shadows,  she 
finds  herself  embracing  life's  highest  privi- 
lege— the  expression  of  personality — ^when 
with  ripened  years  and  faculties  she  is  pecul- 
iarly fitted  to  serve  the  community  and  does 
serve  as  creative  agent  in  some  needed  direc- 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  67 

tion.  For  it  must  be  remembered  that  social 
creativeness  is  quite  as  important  as  the 
expression  of  artistic  or  inventive  power.  A 
Katharine  Davis,  who  introduces  new  ideas 
into  prison  life,  a  Jane  Addams,  who  revo- 
lutionizes social  work,  is  no  less  creative  than 
a  Rosa  Bonheur.  The  "germ  plasm  of 
originality"  has  but  taken  a  different  course. 

What  effect  a  consciously  cultivated  im- 
agination, even  in  one  sex,  would  have  on 
humanity  may  not  be  estimated  since  educa- 
tion has  never  concentrated  upon  developing 
it.  We  have  cultivated  everything  except 
this  supreme  himian  gift. 

The  science  of  an  improved  race,  study- 
ing life  from  within  as  well  as  from  without, 
opens  a  comparatively  new  field.  In  the 
scarcity  of  material  at  hand,  no  more  en- 
lightening work  of  the  effect  of  developed 
mentality  in  both  parents  is  available  than 
Francis  Galton's  Genius  and  Heredity. 
The  genius  with  which  Galton  deals,  how- 
ever, must  be  translated  as  imusual  ability 
to  contribute  something  of  value  to  society. 

This  work  of  the  last  century  was  not 


68       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

written  to  advocate  feminism  nor  is  it  the 
final  word  on  heredity.  Yet  unconsciously 
it  is  the  staunchest  argument  in  favor  of  a 
womanhood  living  with  the  complete  func- 
tioning of  its  inner  powers.  For,  by  a 
series  of  genealogical  tables  of  distinguished 
families — judges,  statesmen,  ministers,  art- 
ists— Galton  shows  that  ability  seldom  is 
isolated  but  tends  to  run  in  families,  trans- 
mitted by  cultured  mothers  as  well  as 
fathers,  the  maternal  strain  being  shown  to 
be  especially  strong.  One  example  is  the 
remarkable  Darwin  family,  of  which  Galton 
himself  is  a  member,  also  Josiah  Wedg- 
wood, of  pottery  fame.  In  our  own  country, 
the  Beecher  family  at  once  suggests  itself. 

But  perhaps  the  most  striking  illustration 
of  the  infusion  of  maternal  talent  is  in  the 
case  of  Elizabeth  Tuttle,  founder  of  the 
Jonathan  Edwards  family.  This  brilUant 
woman  was  the  progenitor  of  a  long  list  of 
eminent  personalities — United  States  presi- 
dents, college  presidents,  senators,  govern- 
ors, jurists  and  writers,  including  Timothy 
Dwight,  Grover  Cleveland,  and  the  Amer- 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  69 

ican  Winston  Churchill.  Charles  B.  Daven- 
port, in  his  interesting  work  on  Heredity, 
tells  us  that  the  history  of  the  United  States 
would  have  changed  its  course  if  Elizabeth 
Tuttle  had  not  lived  and  exercised  her 
mental  faculties  as  well  as  "energizing"  to 
the  extent  of  a  number  of  children.  m^ 

^^yt^  A  significant  fact  is,  that  when  her  ^  K 
<f  clp?g^man  husband  divorced  her  and  mar-  ,1^^ 
Tied  again,  none  of  his  children  by  the  second  ^^ 
wife  became  distinguished.  In  spite  of  heiyOA^ 
faults,  the  mentaHty  of  EHzabeth  T\ii\\e<\JL/^ 
supplied  the  "germ  plasm"  that  helped  to  /^jL-i 
make  her  descendants,  and  the  continent  of  .  {ji*' 
America,  great.  h/M^^^^'^'t^^  ^ 

In  his  valued  work  Galton  does  not  claim  m  jM 
that    gifts    may    be    transmitted    at    will.'^^lV 


Acquired     characteristics     may     not     ^^V\f<r^ 
inherited.  ^L  Im  ^'^fiyr 

What  Galton  does  claim  of  the  traAsmisf^.L^ 
sion  of  abiHty  is  that  given  two  children/!  !?^ 
the  one  of  gifted,  the  other  of  ordinary  ^^\yv 
parents,  the  chances  for  talent  He  largely  ^i^^ 
with  the  child  of  the  talented  parents.  What  i/t^^ 
the  average  mother  makes  of  herself  before  l^  ^ 


70       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

parenthood  becomes,  thus,  in  the  light  of 
heredity,  of  first  importance.  The  ability 
will  sm'ely  reappear,  if  not  in  the  first,  then 
in  a  later  generation.  Biologically  and 
psychologically  nothing  is  lost.  The  men- 
tality of  to-day  is  surely  reinforcing  the 
character  of  to-morrow. 

Society  has  long  cherished  the  illusion — 
strengthened  imfortunately  by  many  ex- 
amples— that  the  man  of  superior  intellect 
has  usually  sought  the  woman  of  inferior 
mind,  finding  rest  in  an  environment  of 
mental  weakness — a  direct  refutation  of  the 
law  of  Hke  seeking  hke.  Galton,  in  his  in- 
structive tables,  shows  that  the  great  man 
has  ever  sought  the  great  woman,  demand- 
ing above  all  else  mental  and  spiritual  satis- 
faction in  his  imion.  "Where  the  heart  lies 
let  the  brain  lie  also,"  wrote  a  famous  poet 
when  he  dedicated  his  volume  of  verse  to  his 
wife. 

May  not  an  explanation  of  past  marital 
blunders  in  men  of  genius — also  an  explana- 
tion of  their  unrest  and  seeking  of  true 
affinity — he  in  the  paucity  of  selection,  the 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  71 

range  in  the  choice  of  mentally  developed 
women  in  the  past  being  of  necessity  small? 

But  what  of  the  child  of  this  average 
woman  living  with  the  flowering  of  her  inner 
faculties  ?  Let  the  scientific  answer  of  a  man 
of  genius  avail.  Thomas  Edison,  who  is 
working  to  perfect  household  implements  to 
free  woman  from  drudgery,  says,  that  the 
child  of  the  futm*e,  of  the  mentally  exer- 
cised and  developed  mother,  as  well  as  the 
mentally  exercised  and  developed  father, 
will  be  what  would  be  considered  to-day  a 
prodigy,  but  in  course  of  time  will  become 
normal.  He  will  be  the  child  of  a  balanced 
humanity,  born  in  the  fullness  of  love  and 
knowledge,  since  he  will  begin  life  high  in 
the  psychical  scale. 

The  saying  has  become  proverbial  that 
great  men  have  had  great  mothers — ^women 
at  least  potentially  great.  Were  the  sons 
great  because  the  mothers'  powers  were 
restricted? 

A  faculty  is  not  exhausted  by  using  it. 
One  devitalizes  it  if  one  does  not  use  it.  Use 
or  lose  is  a  relentless  law. 


72       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

For  many  years  the  advance  guard  of  the 
woman's  movement,  from  John  Stuart 
Mill  to  Olive  Schreiner,  has  sounded  the 
tocsin  that  rights  are  higher  than  privi- 
leges. Twenty  years  ago  came  the  clear, 
scientific  tones  of  Charlotte  Perkins  Gil- 
man — member  of  the  Beecher  family — ^with 
the  simple  truth  that  women  are  people — 
not  merely  feminine,  but  real  human  beings. 
And  the  world  is  only  beginning  to  acknowl- 
edge this  truth  and  adapt  itself  to  it. 

To-day  the  kaleidoscope  of  public  opinion 
must  again  be  turned — since  it  is  all  a  matter 
of  angle — and  a  new  attitude  be  assumed. 
Women  are  not  only  human  beings:  they 
are  mentally  creative  beings.  If  human  they 
must  be  creative,  since  mentality  is  the  mark 
of  the  human.  Woman  must  express  her- 
self psychically,  or  be  an  abortion  of  what 
she  might  become,  and  thus  affect  the  race. 

In  biology  the  law  bids  one  to  select  for 
the  quahties  one  wishes  to  transmit.  If  speed 
is  desired  one  selects  for  swiftness;  if  bulk, 
for  size,  giants  of  the  same  species — not  a 
giant  and  a  dwarf.     Psychologically,  also, 


CREATIVE  WOMANHOOD  73 

the  principle  holds  good.  If  creative  ability 
is  desired  one  must  select  for  creative  ability. 
If  gifted  children  are  an  advantage  one 
must  have  gifted  parents — not  one  parent, 
but  both. 

Viewed  in  this  light,  the  dictum  "Like 
mother,  like  son,"  takes  on  a  new  and  serious 
significance.  Does  it  not  also  enforce  a  new 
and  compelling  obHgation? 

A  mentally  creative  womanhood  is  desir- 
able, then,  because  the  time  demands  a 
mentally  creative  race.  To  realize  all  human 
possibihties  one  must  liberate  all  human 
values.  To  augment  the  racial  imagination 
one  must  augment  the  pressure.  There  is 
no  choice.  It  is  the  unavoidable  logic  of 
progression. 


THE   SOCIAL   AWAKENING 


CHAPTER  IV 

Motherhood 

In  spite  of  all  chatter  to  the  contrary  the 
strength  of  the  woman's  movement  lies  in 
its  improved  mothers — not  in  the  women 
on  the  firing  Hne,  hravely  fighting  to  over- 
come the  Gorgon  of  Public  Prejudice — a 
needed  though  thankless  task — but  in  the 
numberless  awakened  mothers  who  have 
been  steadily  growing,  steadily  becoming 
the  best  kind  of  mothers  the  enlightenment 
of  the  age  would  allow,  and  contributing  to 
society  an  increasingly  improved  child.  It 
is  not  a  coincidence  that  civilization  has  ad- 
vanced more  in  the  last  hundred  years  than 
in  the  previous  thousand — ever  since,  in  fact, 
it  decided  to  give  intellectual  and  spiritual 
opportunities  to  its  women. 

Occasionally  one  of  these  awakened 
mothers  is  inadvertently  brought  before  the 
pubhc  and  convinces  us  that  the  leaven  of 
spiritual  revolt  is  silently  but  powerfully  at 

77 


78       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

work.  A  man  was  recently  rejected  for  duty 
on  a  New  York  jury  in  a  murder  case  be- 
cause, as  he  said,  his  wife  did  not  believe  in 
capital  punishment.  A  reporter,  scenting 
a  sensation,  hunted  this  woman  to  her  lair. 
He  found  a  home  with  healthy  children, 
and  a  happy  mother,  apparently  "steeped  in 
domesticity."  But  when  he  interviewed  her, 
the  wife,  in  clear,  strong  English,  showed 
herself  to  be  a  feminist  of  the  most  modern 
type;  that  is,  a  woman  who  believed  in  the 
expansion  of  women  with  complete  freedom 
for  expression.  She  herself  had  a  profession 
and  was  simply  biding  her  time  to  return  to 
it,  when  her  children  should  be  older.  She, 
being  a  devoted  wife  and  mother,  with  her 
sex  was  subservient  to  life,  to  self -develop- 
ment, and  to  service. 

The  papers  expressed  genuine  surprise 
that  a  "home- woman'*  should  possess  so 
"advanced"  views.  The  feminist  felt  no  sur- 
prise, knowing  that  the  principles  of  the 
woman's  movement  must  produce  the  best 
mothers  and  the  best  children.  For  inner 
development  to  promote  an  improved  social 


MOTHERHOOD  79 

expression  is  the  aim  of  feminism.  A  psy- 
chically developed  womanhood  means  an  im- 
measm*ably  improved  child.  And  it  is  the 
awakened  average  mother  who  is  carrying 
the  race  forward  by  embodying  the  needed 
spiritual  type.  We  may  not  always  hear 
of  her,  but  this  woman  is  making  history 
nevertheless. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  of  this  type  of 
mother  without  first  considering  the  black 
charge  against  her — the  limiting  of  mother- 
hood in  producing  the  smaller  family  of  to- 
day. When  we  secure  our  historic  perspec- 
tive, however,  on  this  modem  social  pheno- 
menon, we  at  once  ask  ourselves  is  woman 
or  is  civihzation  responsible  for  the  unques- 
tioned change?  Is  not  the  smaller  family 
of  greater  present-day  advantage?  May  it 
not  be  a  blessing  and  not  a  bane? 

When  the  population  of  the  earth  was 
scattered,  when  progress  came  through 
conquest  and  the  chief  of  the  tribe  demanded 
legions  for  sacrifice,  large  famihes  were  a 
distinct  social  advantage  and  a  necessary 
contribution.    To-day,  with  the  gradual  les- 


80       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

sening  of  war,  with  science  improving  and 
prolonging  life,  with  congested  housing  con- 
ditions and  the  high  cost  of  living;  above 
all,  with  the  world  emerging  from  its  physi- 
cally constructive  period  and  entering  a  new 
period  of  mental  expansion — the  smaller, 
more  highly  developed  family  is  of  greater 
social  worth.  Not  more  human  beings,  but 
psychically  perfected  beings  is  the  world 
necessity. 

Napoleon  is  said  to  have  looked  over  his 
broken  battalions  and  exclaimed:  "What 
France  needs  is  mothers,"  but  he  was  mis- 
taken. Napoleon's  own  armies  were  proof 
that  mothers  had  done  their  duty.  What 
France  needed  was  to  rid  itself  of  its 
Napoleons — utterly  outgrown  in  spirit  and 
in  knowledge  of  democracy,  in  lust  of  con- 
quest and  disregard  of  human  life.  The 
tomb  of  Napoleon  is  the  mausoleum  of  mili- 
tarism. It  foreshadowed  the  futility  of  war- 
fare and  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the 
period  of  progress  through  bloodshed.  That 
a  large  proportion  of  the  civilized  world  is 
to-day  engaged  in  mortal  combat,  paralyz- 


MOTHERHOOD  81 

ing  industry  and  pauperizing  nations,  only 
emphasizes  this  truth. 

The  question  of  the  falling  birth  rate  is 
not  an  isolated  one,  but  is  closely  related  to 
social,  economic,  and  industrial  questions. 
Various  causes  have  helped  to  bring  about 
the  modem  small  family.  For  example, 
immigration — the  great  movement  toward 
the  redistribution  of  the  peoples  of  the  earth. 
In  America  how  seldom  we  consider  what 
effect  the  unrestricted  flood  of  immigration 
has  had  in  lowering  the  native  birth  rate; 
how  it  has  drained  the  means  of  subsistence 
and  so  advanced  the  cost  of  living.  Previous 
to  1840  the  increase  of  population  in  the 
American  colonies  was  phenomenal — owing 
to  the  need  of  populating  a  new  country  and 
to  the  abundant  food  supply.  From  1840, 
after  the  immense  flood  of  foreigners  began 
to  pour  in,  the  native  population  at  once 
dropped,  and  food  prices  soared.  It  is  in- 
teresting to  note  that  in  the  second  genera- 
tion of  foreigners,  the  birth  rate  also 
diminishes,  owing  undoubtedly  to  the  same 
economic  conditions.    So  much  is  the  birth 


82       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

rate  dependent  upon  the  level  of  subsistence 
that  Buckle,  in  his  Historj'^  of  English 
CiviHzation,  tells  us  that  in  England  the 
number  of  marriages,  and,  as  a  consequence, 
the  number  of  births,  are  regulated  abso- 
lutely by  the  price  of  corn. 

From  the  financial  side — under  the  form 
of  patemaHsm  in  which  we  now  dwell, 
shudder  as  we  may  at  the  term — the  State, 
assuming  the  old-time  functions  of  the 
family  and  educating  each  child  at  a  large 
expense  per  capita,  would  be  financially 
swamped  if  modem  congested  districts 
poured  out  the  immense  families  of  old. 

It  is  true  that  the  resources  of  nature  have 
not  been  exhausted ;  that  mother  earth  could 
feed  all  her  children  adequately  if  humanity 
could  be  spread  evenly  over  her  surface. 
But  men  are  gregarious.  They  love  herd- 
ing. Hence  cities  have  come  to  stay.  And 
the  explanation  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  spiritual  requirements  of  man  have  be- 
come equally  as  pressing  as  the  physical 
necessities  and  must  be  satisfied — the  appe- 
tite for  companionship,  for  sympathy,  for 


MOTHERHOOD  8S 

intellectual  nourishment.  These  require- 
ments are  to  be  found  only  in  communities 
throbbing  with  the  hopes  and  aspirations  of 
a  conquering  humanity ;  in  standing  shoulder 
to  shoulder  and  feeling  the  vibrations  of 
one's  fellow  men.  It  is  useless  to  advise 
"Back  to  nature"  to  people  who  psychically 
could  not  yet  endure  sohtude.  The  wilder- 
ness is  for  the  poet,  the  seer,  and  the  prophet, 
for  men  of  inner  resources.  And  so  cities 
have  aggregated  to  minister  to  man's 
spiritual  demands  imtil  he,  through  the 
revelation  of  his  inner  experiences,  comes 
to  find  himself.  Then  he  may  live  where  he 
will.  His  kingdom  will  know  no  geograph- 
ical bounds. 

Throughout  history  it  is  a  fact  that  a  fall- 
ing birth  rate  has  been  the  sign  not  of  a 
declining  but  of  a  rising  civihzation,  and  is 
not  to  be  feared  while  a  falHng  death  rate 
is  also  maintained.  Otherwise  would  the 
Orient  outstrip  us. 

When  we  accept  the  theory  that  the 
smaller  improved  family  is  of  more  definite 
modem  advantage  we  at  once  ask  ourselves 


84       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

if  so-called  race  suicide  is  really  race  suicide  ? 
May  it  not  be  race  sanity?  May  not  the 
motto  of  William  Morris  in  house  furnish- 
ing, "Fewer  things,  and  better,"  be  para- 
phrased, in  all  reverence  to  motherhood  and 
a  sincere  regard  for  society's  complex  needs, 
into  "Fewer  children,  and  better"? 

When  we  learn  that  the  establishment  of 
milk  stations  one  summer  in  New  York 
City  alone  had  an  almost  incredible  effect  on 
the  mortality  of  babies — and  let  it  not  be 
forgotten  that  it  was  one  of  the  awakened 
mothers,  Mrs.  E.  H.  Harriman,  who  taught 
this  practical  lesson  to  the  city  fathers  by 
maintaining  stations  from  her  own  purse — 
we  begin  to  see  upon  what  civic  practicalities 
the  question  of  race  perpetuity  depends. 
When  poHtics  have  become  domestic — as 
they  really  are,  though  we  are  pleased  to 
relegate  them  to  distant  realms  called  polit- 
ical— we  shall  lay  the  blame  for  fewer  chil- 
dren, not  on  a  falling  birthrate,  but  on  our- 
selves for  letting  them  needlessly  die. 

As  the  glacial  period  has  been  outlived, 
as  the  dinosaur  and  all  the  huge  crawling 


MOTHERHOOD  86 

vertebrates  have  been  outgrown  as  too  large 
and  unwieldy  for  modern  life — so  the  masto- 
don family  has  been  sloughed  off  because 
unfit  for  a  period  that  has  outgrown  brute 
strength,  and  has  substituted  a  more  highly 
organized  and  developed  animal  mentality 
in  the  struggle  to  survive. 

The  ideals  of  each  age  change.  And  the 
parents  of  every  age  must  improve  if  racial 
stagnation,  or,  worse  still,  degeneration,  is 
not  to  ensue.  Our  mothers  were  good 
enough  for  us,  we  say,  and  so  they  were. 
But  they  are  not  good  enough  for  our  chil- 
dren any  more  than  we  should  be  adequate 
parents  for  the  children  of  1930.  The  quali- 
fications of  motherhood  are  not  static.  In 
fact,  no  other  relationship  calls  for  such 
plasticity,  such  fluidity  to  reflect  the  spirit 
of  the  times,  and  to  move  with  it,  as  mother- 
hood. 

The  needs  of  the  state  have  ever  deter- 
mined what  the  population,  what  the  mother- 
hood, of  the  state  shall  be.  And  parenthood, 
instead  of  being  the  individual  function  we 
have  always  considered  it,  is  in  reality  a 


86       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

social  function  in  which  the  necessities  of 
society  determine  the  social  contribution.  In 
the  spirit  of  the  times  lies  the  heart  of  all 
causation.  And  it  is  this  spirit  that  deter- 
mines the  character  and  the  volume  of  the 
increase. 

What  is  the  spirit  of  the  times  to-day? 
What  is  the  great,  new  characteristic  that 
is  engaging  and  molding  the  minds  of 
men?  Is  it  not  a  passion  for  racial  better- 
ment, a  stirring  consciousness  that  all  is  not 
right  with  the  world,  as  we  have  so  com- 
placently sung,  but  that  much  of  it  is  shame- 
fully wrong,  and  that  we,  and  not  a  far-off 
Deity,  are  to  blame? 

The  most  striking  characteristic  of  the  new 
motherhood,  then,  is  the  social  passion  which 
marks  the  spirit  of  the  age — an  awakening 
of  ethical  and  moral  forces  which  precede 
all  great  concerted  action  where  social  jus- 
tice is  the  goal.  Ellen  Key  has  said  that 
the  last  century  was  the  century  of  the 
woman,  the  present  the  century  of  the  child. 
To  the  feminist  the  one  is  necessarily  ante- 
cedent to  the  other.     There  could  be  no 


MOTHERHOOD  87 

century  of  the  child  until  there  had  first 
been  the  century  of  the  spiritually  and 
socially  awakened  woman.  The  agitation 
over  child  labor,  and  all  questions  of  child 
improvement,  have  been  an  inevitable  out- 
come of  the  new  social  passion  of  mothers. 
Never  has  welfare  work  been  so  nearly  uni- 
versal as  to-day.  Never  have  factory  horrors 
and  tenement  evils  been  so  exposed,  so  re- 
lated to*  the  injury  done  to  the  child,  and 
through  the  child  to  the  future  citizenship. 
A  socially  alert  motherhood's  first  instinct 
was  to  follow  the  child  into  the  street,  the 
school,  the  factory,  the  prison — there  to 
guard  and  protect  its  own. 

Through  the  force  of  this  social  passion 
we  see  the  type  of  the  old,  individual  mother 
— ^the  natural  product  of  a  period  when 
families  lived  in  isolation — expanding  into 
the  world  mother,  the  equally  natural  prod- 
uct of  the  crowded  living  of  to-day.  This 
mother  does  not  see  duty  circumscribed 
even  by  the  circle  of  her  own  little  ones, 
but  her  tender  sensibilities,  because  of  this 
home  group,  go  out  to  the  world's  little 


88       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

ones — the  children  of  poverty,  of  consequent 
neglect,  of  dirt,  and  of  grim  despair.  To 
such  a  mother — impersonal  through  having 
first  been  passionately  personal — the  fact 
that  any  child  should  be  hungry  while  her 
child  is  fed,  any  child  cold  while  hers  is  warm, 
is  intolerable  and  sufficient  motive  power  to 
account  for  a  large  part  of  the  organized 
social  work  by  which  the  age  will  be  known. 
For  the  expression  of  the  social  passion  is 
maternal  above  everything  else.  It  is  the 
great  spirit  of  motherhood  brooding  over  the 
world.  It  goes  into  all  unclean  places.  It 
cleanses  and  changes  the  social  environment 
in  order  that  the  small  human  plant — the 
woman's  own  heartbloom — ^may  grow  erect, 
unhindered. 

But  not  only  to  the  woman  blessed  with 
children  has  this  inner  quickening,  this  sense 
of  divine  world-motherhood,  come.  The 
social  passion  has  stirred  the  great  mother 
spirit  to  expression  in  women  denied  the 
boon  of  children,  in  whom  the  mother-heart 
is  nevertheless  strong.  We  may  not  know 
the   inner   tragedies   that   have   denied   to 


MOTHERHOOD  89 

these  women  nature's  complete  fulfillment. 
Yet  for  them  life  is  no  longer  a  sterility 
and  a  scoffing.  They,  too,  may  now 
mother  communities  and  in  needed,  wide- 
spread, social  expression  find  the  maternal 
outlet  which  nature  has  thwarted. 

But  as  important  as  the  social  character- 
istics of  the  new  motherhood  are,  they  are 
second  to  the  spiritual  qualifications  re- 
quired. How  does  the  modern  mother  pro- 
vide for  the  inner  unfolding  of  her  child? 
On  the  development  of  the  mother  rests  the 
fitness  for  this  supreme  task.  On  her  atti- 
tude toward  life  almost  wholly  depends 
whether  a  child  is  to  face  the  world  spirit- 
ually armored  to  conquer  circumstances,  or 
stripped  of  the  knowledge  of  those  inner 
resources  that  alone  will  equip  him  with 
power. 

The  psychic  atmosphere  into  which  even 
a  baby  is  introduced  has  a  most  powerful 
effect  in  molding  its  disposition.  We  all 
know  that  a  nervous  mother — a  nervous 
atmosphere — ^makes  a  nervous  child.  A 
troubled  mistress  makes  a  troubled  house- 


90       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

hold.  Through  laws  that  we  glimpse  but 
do  not  yet  understand,  the  mother  attracts 
the  conditions  of  her  predominating  state  of 
mind.  There  are  psychic  as  well  as  chemical 
laws  of  attraction.  '  One  need  not  be  clair- 
voyant nor  clairaudient  to  sojourn  long  in 
a  home  and  discover  its  controlling  temper. 
There  are  parents  who  "wear"  on  their  chil- 
dren, though  loving  them  devotedly;  daugh- 
ters who  improve  when  they  leave  the  circle 
of  the  mother's  overanxiety;  and  sons  who 
develop  faster  when  removed  from  fathers 
who  irritate  rather  than  promote  a  steady 
growth. 

How  important  the  psychic  Ufe  is  to  the 
developing  child  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
results  of  Mme.  Montessori's  methods.  In 
the  Casa  Bambini — that  home  at  last  built 
especially  for  children — the  httle  ones  of 
the  poor  are  taken,  children  from  four  to 
seven  years  of  age.  No  food  was  at  first 
served  to  these  unfortunates.  But  so  ade- 
quate was  the  environment  to  the  growing 
inner  needs,  so  satisfying  was  the  psychic 
life  to  the  hungry  child  mind,  and  so  won- 


MOTHERHOOD  91 

derful  the  intellectual  response  of  these 
mentally  nourished  little  ones,  that  bodily- 
welfare  was  affected  and  the  children  gained 
in  color,  in  brightness,  and  in  health. 

The  psychic  atmosphere  of  this  school  also 
bestows  complete  spiritual  freedom.  "What- 
ever you  want  to  do — don't"  is  the  attitude 
of  many  mothers.  "Whatever  you  want  to 
do,  do,"  in  the  right  environment,  and  under 
proper  guidance,  is  Madame  Montessori's 
method.  But  it  is  impossible  for  a  teacher 
or  mother  to  environ  a  child  with  this  Hberat- 
ing  atmosphere  until  she  herself  has  become 
spiritually  free — that  is,  until  she  under- 
stands the  importance  of  inner  causation  as 
the  initial  motor  force  of  life.  Then  she 
finds  herself  growing  with  her  child — surely 
one  of  life's  rare  ecstasies — and  eager  above 
all  things  to  hold  and  maintain  her  lead  as 
she  must  do  if  she  is  to  retain  a  complete 
unity  with  her  little  ones.  For  the  highest 
type  of  child-love  is  not  the  affection  that 
loves  merely  the  hand  that  bestows  creature 
comforts;  but  the  abject,  spiritual  idolatry 
of  a  small  being  to  a  wonderful  mother  com- 


92       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

panion  who  represents  to  the  ideal-loving 
child  mind,  something  of  inner  power,  of 
self -direction,  of  the  beauty  of  purpose  and 
accomphshment.  These  are  the  mothers 
who  are  worshiped,  living  or  dead,  whose 
spirits  never  die. 

Great  men  who  have  been  most  loyal  in 
attributing  the  secret  of  their  power  to  the 
motherhood  of  the  past  have  invariably 
credited  their  gifts,  not  to  the  housekeeping, 
but  to  the  companionship,  the  spiritual 
stimulus  of  their  mothers. 

To  be  intellectually  companionable  to  her 
children  is  the  modern  mother's  ambition. 
Motherhood  alone  will  not  make  her  society 
desirable.  Congeniality  must  be  established. 
There  are  mothers  who  bore  their  children 
to  extinction  for  lack  of  abiHty  to  enter  the 
world  of  the  child.  By  comprehending  that 
eager  fairy  world  and  assuming  leadership 
therein,  a  mother  makes  herself  more  fas- 
cinating than  mortal  may  usually  hope  to 
be.  For  to  be  fascinating  one  must  be  inter- 
esting, and  to  be  interesting  to  children  one 
must  find  the  key  to  that  secret  garden  of 


MOTHERHOOD  93 

the  imagination  where  life  is  ever  fragrant 
because  pulsating  with  the  growth  of  ideas 
that  childhood  wishes  to  gather.  Even 
though  the  time  for  communion  between 
mother  and  child  is  only  the  precious  hours 
of  night  and  morning,  a  mutual  interest  may 
be  established  in  something  in  which  every 
child  shows  a  normal  delight — pictures, 
books,  music,  inventions,  play — and  a  mag- 
netic bond  be  formed  that  will  be  a  fore- 
shadowing of  the  friendships  and  spiritual 
standards  of  the  later  man.  And  surely  to 
be  a  child's  best  friend,  as  well  as  his  mother, 
is  a  relationship  that  is  lasting  in  profit  and 
delight. 

The  spiritually  awakened  motherhood  of 
to-day  is  also  a  consecrated  motherhood.  It 
does  not  believe  that  life  begins  only  with 
birth,  but  is  profoundly  affected  by  all  the 
previous  period.  In  this  direction  we  do  not 
yet  dream  of  the  possibihties  of  spiritual 
impetus  that  may  be  given  life.  If  the  sub- 
ject were  not  considered  too  sacred  to  dis- 
cuss, many  awakened  mothers  could  give 
solemn  testimony  to  the  fact  of  children's 


94       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

being  consecrated  to  the  highest  purposes  in 
life  before  birth,  and  of  their  having  lived  to 
see  this  consecration  transformed  into  noble 
service.  Every  prayer  a  mother  breathes  in 
this  important  prenatal  period  wraps  itself 
into  the  convolutions  of  the  child-brain.  It 
matters  not  what  physicians  say  to  the  con- 
trary; mothers  know.  The  psychic  life  of 
the  mother,  consciously  directed,  has  an 
indisputable,  vitalizing  effect  upon  the  un- 
born child.  The  potentialities  for  race  bet- 
terment, in  this  one  direction  through  a 
spiritually  quickened  motherhood,  are  be- 
yond computation. 

The  psychically  awakened  mother  is  also 
aware  of  the  importance  of  health  to  the  life 
she  is  to  give.  And  so  we  have  the  athletic 
girl,  the  athletic  woman  and — when  her 
duties  will  permit — the  athletic  mother. 
And  the  result,  even  in  so  short  a  period,  of 
the  recognized  value  of  outdoor  life  for 
women,  is  becoming  the  Greek  idea  of  de- 
veloped bodies  to  enfold  developed  minds. 

At  a  university,  recently,  the  measure- 
ment of  the  students  disclosed  a  new  typ( 


MOTHERHOOD  95 

the  football  type — a  race  of  hardy  young 
giants,  attributable,  according  to  the  instruc- 
tors, to  outdoor  exercise  and  to  healthier, 
athletic  mothers.  And  this  type  is  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  highest  psychic  development. 
In  Mr.  Kipling's  thrilling  polo  story,  the 
pony  scribe  admonishes  the  other  ponies  to 
play  with  their  brains  as  well  as  their  heels. 
Success  in  athletics  always  goes  to  the 
rounded  personality — to  the  individual  who 
has  trained  the  hand  or  the  foot  to  respond 
instantly  to  the  brain.  An  athletic  mother- 
hood is  a  distinct  asset  to  the  race. 

The  spiritually  awakened  mother  is  also 
a  patriotic  mother,  but  the  patriotism  is  of 
a  different  order  from  that  of  old.  It  is 
civic — ^not  militant.  The  new  mother  brings 
her  boys  up  to  live  for  their  country,  not  to 
die  for  it ;  to  give  themselves  to  an  improved 
citizenship;  to  fight  the  modern  conmion 
enemy,  which  is  not  the  host  marching 
around  the  outside  of  the  city,  blowing 
trumpets  before  the  onslaught ;  but  the  quiet 
forces  of  corruption  silently  sapping  the 
city's  resources  within.    The  enemy  may  be 


96       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

no  longer  disposed  of  by  the  simple  process 
of  killing  him.  His  weapons  have  become 
more  deadly  because  more  complex  and 
subtle.  The  new  patriotism  among  men  and 
women  organizes  to  fight  the  invisible  foe 
within  the  city  walls. 

Because  the  warrior  ideal  is  passing,  the 
charge  has  been  made  that  the  world  has 
become  feminized,  and  that  the  prevalence 
of  women  school-teachers  is  causing  the 
manly  virtues  to  become  extinct.  If  this  is 
true,  may  it  not  be  that  civiUzation  is  en- 
deavoring to  teach  us  to  alter  our  definition 
of  manly?  Most  of  the  outrages  in  history 
were  "manly."  May  we  not  possibly  pursue 
some  of  the  "feminine"  virtues  without 
losing  virility?  The  modem  dentist  advises: 
"Be  brave — be  a  woman."  It  requires  more 
courage,  more  fortitude,  to  face  motherhood 
once  than  a  cannon  a  dozen  times.  To  be 
feminine  is  not  always  to  be  soft — though 
man  is  pleased  to  cherish  the  illusion.  To 
be  feminine  may  be  to  be  lion-hearted — and 
then  not  to  talk  about  it!  If  the  gladiator 
type  is  outgrown  it  is  not  because  the  world 


MOTHERHOOD  97 

has  become  "feminized"  but  because  progress 
has  no  further  use  for  him.  The  field  for 
achievement  is  not  destroyed.  The  ice  floes 
of  the  North,  the  blue  dome  under  which 
we  hve,  woo  the  valiant  souls  of  to-day  who 
hold  hfe  hghtly  if  only  their  spirits  may 
conquer.  The  Scotts,  the  Bleriots,  the 
Wilbur  Wrights,  and  the  legions  of  their 
intrepid  followers,  bear  witness  to  the  fact, 
not  that  the  world  has  become  feminized, 
but  that  the  pathway  of  valor  leads  through 
new  realms  of  heroism. 

And  lastly  the  new,  psychic  motherhood 
is  voluntary.  And  to  be  a  voluntary  mother 
is  to  summon  all  the  spiritual  forces  of  the 
universe  to  one's  aid.  A  beautiful  girl,  who 
had  recently  become  engaged,  said  to  her 
mother's  friend:  "I  wish  to  be  married  and 
have  a  child  immediately.  Do  you  think  that 
unwomanly?  I  want  to  give  Him  one." 
The  mother's  friend  did  not  consider  the 
confession  "imwomanly."  She  knew  from 
what  divine  sources  the  impulse  came — ^knew 
that  it  was  spiritual  as  well  as  natural. 
Instead  her  eyes  filled  with  tears.    She  her- 


98       THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

self  had  felt  that  voluntary  impulse,  as  had 
thousands  of  other  pure-minded  women, 
when  stirred  by  a  truly  complete  love.  For 
true  love  is  always  creative.  It  wishes  to 
give  and  to  give. 

The  value  is  immeasurable  of  such  divinely 
desired  children — the  longed-for  child,  not 
the  haphazard  offspring,  the  child  of  irre- 
sistible affinity,  not  of  passing  chance.  If 
ever  the  state  is  to  be  uplifted,  if  ever 
humanity  is  to  improve,  if  ever  the  Christian 
ideals  of  civilization  are  to  be  made  real,  it 
will  be  by  these  children  who  are  consciously 
brought  into  being  by  high-minded  men  and 
women,  whether  their  advent  be  in  a  castle 
or  a  cottage.  These  are  the  children  of  light 
who  represent  the  true  joy  and  genius  of 
motherhood.  They  comprise  the  world's 
saviours.  Of  such  are  earth's  kingdom  of 
heaven. 


CHAPTER  V 

Woman  and  the  Revaluation  of  Life 

Some  years  ago  a  clear- visioned  English- 
man wrote,  "There  is  no  wealth  but  life." 
And  the  world,  applauding  the  beauty  of 
the  sentiment,  repudiated  it  as  a  sociological 
fact.  For  if  a  nation  had  realized  that  its 
wealth  lay  not  in  the  silver  in  its  mints,  nor 
the  gold  in  its  mines,  nor  the  bonds  in  its 
vaults,  but  in  the  quality  of  its  men  and 
women,  it  could  in  no  wise  have  debased  or 
squandered  its  national  treasure.  Only  a 
strong  countercurrent,  opposed  to  material- 
ism and  recognizing  true  values,  could  have 
transformed  the  general  estimate.  Has  the 
spiritual  influx  of  the  woman's  movement 
offered  such  a  current,  infusing  into  public 
opinion,  at  least  partially,  a  desire  for  a  new 
valuation  of  life? 

In  every  age  noble  men  and  women  have 
tried  to  conserve  Hfe;  but  in  no  age,  before 
the  present,  has  there  been  so  widespread,  so 

99 


100     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

wholesale  a  protest  against  human  waste. 
Conservation  is  the  modern  watchword. 
All  the  countless  altruistic  movements  of 
to-day  have  for  their  motive  one  underlying 
aim — conservation  of  the  individual  because 
of  his  tardily  recognized  value  to  society. 

It  is  not  claimed  that  altruism  is  exclu- 
sively feminine.  It  is  asserted,  however, 
that  the  conservation  of  hfe  is,  and  always 
has  been,  woman's  charge.  If  her  entrance 
into  the  larger  world  of  affairs  had  not  been 
followed  by  an  unparalleled  interest  in  im- 
proving life,  her  age-long  nature  would  have 
been  belied.  For  only  women  know  the 
cost  of  hfe.  Every  ounce  of  human  flesh 
and  blood  extracts  its  toll  of  pain  from  some 
woman.  We  should  expect  this  payee  of 
humanity,  experiencing  the  first  cost  of 
production,  to  approximate  hfe  as  no  one 
else  could. 

Much  of  the  so-called  unrest  of  women  has 
been  spiritual  unrest  because  they  could  not 
endure  the  world  as  they  found  it.  Unneces- 
sary human  wastage  stared  at  them  on  every 
hand.    The  inherent  nature  of  woman,  once 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  101 

freed  from  the  benumbing  confines  of  a  cir- 
cumscribed domesticity,  ached  for  the  oppor- 
tunity to  set  the  world's  values  right.  And 
this  is  what  feminism,  opposed  like  the  dead- 
liest virus,  has  been  trying  to  effect:  to 
direct  the  spirit  of  conservation,  generously 
lavished  on  forests  and  waterways,  into 
channels  of  more  immediate  consequence — 
the  conservation  of  humanity — in  order  to 
check  society's  reckless  and  inexcusable 
waste. 

What  old  blood  fails  to  perceive,  inert 
from  familiarity  and  long  usage,  young 
blood  espies  and  rejects.  Feminism  is  the 
young  blood  of  idealism  injected  into  the 
hardened  arteries  of  old-world  customs. 
To  the  many  it  has  sometimes  seemed  as  if, 
in  the  transfusion,  life  itself  were  ebbing. 
To  the  discriminating  it  is  apparent  that 
himianity  is  building  itself  a  new  body  on 
new  foundations — foundations  broad  enough 
to  support  the  entire  human  family,  not 
forgetting  women  and  children,  and  strong 
enough  to  allow  for  all  the  aspirations  of  a 
revalued  race. 


102     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

Unrest  is  not  a  crime.  Unrest  is  a  symp- 
tom of  growth.  Just  how  much  the  unrest 
of  women  has  had  to  do  with  evolving  the 
new  ideals  that  are  characterizing  the  age 
will  never  be  known.  Nor  is  it  important 
that  it  should  be  known.  The  significant 
thing  for  men  and  women  to  recognize  is 
that  a  new  valuation  has  been  placed  on  life 
and  must  be  maintained  by  them  working 
together.  Feminism  is  not  anti-man.  Fem- 
inism is  pro-man.  The  conservation  of  life 
is  human,  racial  business,  not  of  one  sex, 
but  of  both. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  little  value  was 
attached  to  human  life  in  the  past  since 
himian  waste  is  one  of  the  most  ancient  ideas 
and  biological  in  foundation.  For  countless 
ages  human  evolution  progressed,  like  lower 
animal  evolution,  through  the  sacrifice  of 
untold  millions. 

In  the  early  history  of  mankind  slavery 
was  the  lot  of  the  majority,  human  Hves 
being  as  plentiful,  and  as  valueless,  as  blades 
of  grass.  The  miracle  of  the  pyramids  was 
made  possible  because  of  the  cheapness  of 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  103 

human  labor,  worked  at  the  point  of  the 
lash.  The  exodus  from  Egypt  was  the 
first  historical  revolt  from  a  Hght  valuation 
of  Hfe.  Even  in  the  comparatively  recent 
days  of  Rome's  splendor  her  population 
numbered  a  few  thousand  citizens  and  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  slaves. 

Advancing  through  the  ages  we  find  only 
a  slightly  increasing  conservation.  As  late 
as  the  middle  of  the  last  century  slavery  was 
practiced  by  a  Christian  nation  and  was 
abohshed  only  after  the  sacrifice  of  nearly 
a  million  Hves.  Before  Lord  Shaftesbury's 
recent  factory  reforms  were  enacted  in  Eng- 
land, infants  were  employed  in  mills  and 
were  beaten  awake  when  falling  asleep  at 
their  long  tasks.  When  laws  forbidding  the 
exploitation  of  babies  were  passed  large 
famihes  waned,  no  longer  of  advantage 
when  not  every  member  could  be  counted 
upon  to  produce.  As  men  have  been  forced 
out  of  slavery  and  taught  to  belong  to  them- 
selves— the  idea  impressed  by  that  richest 
thinker  of  the  Renaissance,  Rabelais — and 
as  the  needs  of  childhood  have  been  recog- 


104     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

nized  and  guarded,  the  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual has  slowly  increased. 

To-day  we  are  witnessing  the  beginning 
of  an  almost  universal  revolt  against  waste- 
ful human  expenditure.  Is  it  an  accident 
that  this  protest,  this  revaluation  of  Hfe,  has 
followed  so  quickly  the  social  awakening  of 
women?  Does  the  character  of  the  woman's 
movement  contain  elements  that  equip  her 
for  this  unprecedented  crusade? 

The  two  great  avenues  of  enlightenment 
V  ><o  women  in  the  last  century  were  the 
>^  woman's  college  and  the  woman's  club.  The 
y^  nrst  taught  her  to  think.  The  second  taught 
her  to  act.  For  the  woman's  club  soon  out- 
grew its  spirit  of  mental  acquisition  and  gave 
rise  to  a  desire  to  do  and  to  be.  It  could 
not  long  endure  being  lectured— even  by 
experts.  It  was  burning  to  know  hfe,  not 
from  rocking  chairs,  as  they  read  about  it, 
nor  from  camp  stools,  as  they  listened  to 
specialists  describe  it,  but  from  contact,  as 
their  husbands  and  brothers  knew  it.  Com- 
mittees were  formed.  Shops,  tenements, 
factories,    schools,    hospitals,    prisons    and 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  105 

courts  were  visited.  Evils,  injustices, 
wrong  systems  of  which  the  pubHc  mind  was 
either  ignorant  or  hardened  by  custom,  were 
laid  bare.  And  the  result  ?  Not  one  of  these 
places  has  since  known  peace;  not  one  of 
these  evils  but  has  been  held  up  to  the  public 
eye,  to  receive  public  maledictions,  if  it  did 
not  at  once  institute  attempts  at  reform. 

The  woman  investigator,  the  woman  agi- 
tator, and  the  woman  advocate  are  the  direct 
products  of  the  woman's  movement.  That 
the  woman  investigator  is  filling  a  needed 
world  place  is  proven  by  the  fact  that  she 
is  being  sent  forth  by  awakened,  clear- 
sighted men  to  make  clean  the  dark  spots 
of  the  earth. 

It  may  be  seen,  then,  that  the  new  chan- 
nels of  opportunity  opened  to  woman  in  the 
last  century  equipped  her  not  only  with 
theoretical  knowledge  of  life,  but  also  with 
a  practical  arsenal  of  facts.  The  most  in- 
tolerable condition  presented  was  the  various 
forms  of  waste  that  drained  the  human 
family.  Almost  every  effort  of  women 
since  then,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  obtain 


106     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

so-called  "rights,"  has  been  directed  toward 
greater  power  to  prevent  this  unnecessary 
leakage.  In  States  where  women  are 
unenfranchised  public  opinion  must  still  be 
influenced  by  the  old  methods  of  indirection 
— beloved  by  sentimentalists  who  consider 
smiles  more  potent  than  votes — by  agitating, 
prodding,  and  annoying  public  officials  until 
they  are  exasperated  into  executing  woman's 
will.  In  those  States  where  direct  action  is 
possible  nearly  every  law  placed  by  women 
upon  the  statutes  has  had  a  bearing  upon 
the  conservation  of  human  life. 

We  hear  often  that  this  is  the  age  of  revo- 
lution. Rather  is  it  the  age  of  protest.  A 
new  ideahsm  vibrates  through  the  air.  And 
its  evidence  lies  in  a  deeply  aroused  com- 
munity conscience.  All  the  widespread 
interest  in  better  housing  conditions,  better 
factories,  in  wrongs  to  childhood,  in  the 
white  slave  traffic,  in  the  spot-lighted  social 
evil,  in  mothers'  pensions,  in  workmen's 
compensations,  in  the  minimum  wage,  in 
insurance,  in  all  the  departments  of  welfare 
work — are  but  evidences  of  the  efforts  of 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  107 

an  aroused  community  endeavoring  to  re- 
value and  conserve  life. 

What  has  awakened  this  community  con- 
science? A  sense  of  democracy?  Partly. 
Democracy  is  the  mother  of  Feminism.  But 
in  the  last  century  the  preponderance  of 
man's  energy  was  admittedly  commercially 
engaged.  A  period  of  great  invention  was 
followed  by  a  period  of  great  prosperity. 
Production,  distribution,  competition  taxed 
man's  nervous  and  mental  capacity.  Re- 
sponsibihties  of  gigantic  business  enterprises 
left  him  little  leisure  or  power  to  grapple 
with  problems  of  mere  human  betterment. 
Moreover,  it  must  be  remembered  that  busi- 
ness success  has  been  often  attained  at  the 
price  of  atrophy  of  the  finer  ethical  qualities. 
Competition  may  be  the  soul  of  trade.  It 
is  also  the  skeleton  at  the  feast  of  altruism. 
A  womanhood  unmoved  by  self-interest  or 
commercial  bias,  morally  and  socially  quick- 
ened, would  naturally  fix  attention  on  evils 
that  had  crept  in  imnoticed  in  the  din  of 
industrial  strife,  and  to  which  the  governing 
conscience  had  become  commercially  inured. 


108     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

Morality,  like  immorality,  is  contagious. 
It  does  not  seem  presumptuous  to  assume 
that  the  woman  inquirer,  with  her  new 
interest  in  civic  and  social  righteousness, 
should  be  responsible  for  at  least  a  part  of 
the  social  sensitiveness  of  the  day.  In  fact, 
at  this  period  of  man's  economic  engross- 
ment, it  is  difficult  to  see  from  what  source, 
other  than  an  investigating  womanhood, 
the  spiritual  stimulus  could  have  come  nec- 
essary to  arouse  a  public  revolt  against 
world  iniquities,  and  a  reassertion  of  human 
values. 

To  the  woman  with  more  leisure,  equip- 
ped with  first-hand  laiowledge  of  prevent- 
able waste,  the  evils  of  unlivable  tenements, 
unhygienic  factories,  overworked  women  and 
under-nourished  children,  emerging  from 
the  shadows  into  the  foreground  of  events, 
have  become  matters  of  burning  importance. 
In  time  the  public  mind  was  ignited.  An 
enlightened  womanhood,  moved  by  the  age- 
long spirit  of  conservation,  did  exactly  what 
might  have  been  expected  of  it:  rushed  into 
the  gap  of  daily  overlooked  social  abuses. 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  109 

with  the  sapping  of  racial  vitality,  in  order 
to  revalue  and  conserve  mankind. 

For  example,  the  question  of  imsanitary 
tenements.  Homes  were  woman's  specialty. 
Physical  comfort  had  been  her  "sphere." 
That  two  thirds  of  humanity  lived  in  so- 
called  homes  unfit  for  animals,  and  that 
men — churchmen  even — were  accepting 
rents  for  these  hovels  conducive  to  race 
suicide,  v/as  a  situation  to  excite  inmiediate 
feminine  protest. 

On  the  subject  of  child  labor — child 
wrongs,  always  with  us  but  only  recently 
recognized  as  the  most  reprehensible  and 
prodigal  of  human  wastes — the  agitation  of 
one  half  of  humanity,  the  mother-half,  in 
this  direction  would  be  very  disturbing  to 
public  complacency.  Problems  of  childhood 
are  now  discussed  not  only  from  a  humane 
viewpoint,  but  also  as  an  insane  squan- 
dering of  potential  wealth.  In  many  cases 
social  neglect  has  arisen  from  social  igno- 
rance. When  it  was  learned  that  in  the  city 
of  New  York  and  the  borough  of  Brooklyn, 
the  so-called  City  of  Homes,  thousands  of 


110     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

children  went  breakf  astless  to  school,  a  wave 
of  revolt  arose  in  certain  interested  members 
of  the  community.  A  luncheon  for  public 
school  children  followed,  given,  in  certain 
localities,  as  a  charity.  An  improved  order 
of  scholarship  was  a  consequence  of  a 
better  nourished  body — an  important  con- 
servation of  childhood  along  practical  lines. 

Or  consider  the  widespread  interest  in  the 
age-long  social  evil.  Behind  the  present 
imprecedented  discussion  stands  feminine 
enlightenment  revolting  against  the  bhnd, 
molelike  undermining  of  the  human  family. 
This,  of  all  evils,  saps  the  life  of  women  and 
children  most  deeply  and  touches  the  prob- 
lem of  race  preservation  most  vitally. 

Women  of  the  college  settlements  have 
long  devoted  their  energies  to  human  con- 
servation. The  new  sohdarity,  the  spirit  of 
esprit  de  corps  among  all  women,  is  illus- 
trated in  the  recent  women's  strikes.  It  is 
indeed  a  new  manifestation  for  women  of 
the  leisure  class — a  class  fast  becoming  ex- 
tinct— to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
women  toilers,  moved,  though  they  may  not 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  111 

Imow  it,  by  the  maternal  instinct  to  pluck 
from  the  bm-ning  the  precious  brand  of  life. 

When  it  became  known,  in  the  recent 
garment  workers'  strike,  that  women  slaved 
at  machines  twelve  and  fourteen  hours  a 
day  for  a  mere  pittance;  that  they  were 
obliged  to  pay  for  the  use  of  the  machines 
and  for  the  needles  they  broke;  that  the 
hygienic  conditions  surrounding  them  be- 
longed to  the  dark  ages,  not  a  trades  union, 
but  the  well-being  of  humanity  was  seen  to 
be  at  stake.  Women  high  and  low  responded 
to  the  racial  call.  Women  who  had  never 
known  want  left  their  homes,  in  the  cold 
winter  dawn,  to  do  picket  work  and  help  win 
the  battle  for  their  less  fortunate  sisters  who 
owned  nothing  but  the  labor  of  their  hands. 
Women  of  wealth  opened  their  purses  and 
helped  these  workers  to  hve  as  they  fought 
for  life  itself.  The  united  protest  won. 
What  one  woman  could  not  do  as  an  indi- 
vidual, women  did  collectively.  The  sister- 
hood of  woman  is  beginning  to  keep  step 
with  the  brotherhood  of  man. 

Every  strike  won  by  women  for  women  is 


112     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

a  testimony  to  woman's  socially  awakened 
conscience,  acting  upon  the  community 
conscience,  in  an  effort  to  revalue  and  con- 
serve life. 

And  what  is  the  result  of  the  ethical  re- 
birth that  has  spread  like  a  tidal  wave  over 
aU  the  land?  Science  is  studying  causes  and 
trying  panaceas  in  the  earnest  effort  to  im- 
prove the  world's  habitation.  Citizenship 
is  being  widened  to  include  Httle  citizens  as 
well  as  big,  and  not  to  exclude  mothers, 
whose  cooperation,  because  of  their  experi- 
ence, should  be  more  sought  than  that  of  any 
other  class.  Social  responsibihty,  moreover, 
is  being  placed  where  responsibility  belongs 
— on  the  community  as  well  as  upon  the 
individual.  Modem  social  conditions  are 
found  to  create  rather  than  to  check  crime. 
A  degree  of  human  wantonness  will  always 
be  with  us.  But  the  proportion  of  degen- 
erates, hke  the  proportion  of  defectives,  is 
infinitely  small.  A  noted  English  sociologist 
shows  us  that  the  number  of  murders  and 
suicides  in  congested  localities  in  London 
scarcely  varies  from  year  to  year,  springing 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  113 

from  conditions  rather  than  from  individual 
origin.  To  maintain  slums  is  to  invite 
iniquity.  To  abolish  slums  is  to  decrease 
crime. 

That  "Poverty  is  the  root  of  aU  evil"  is 
an  axiom  often  heard  among  social  workers. 
That  it  is  beginning  to  be  sounded  at  the 
fount  of  public  Ufe  is  one  of  the  hopeful 
signs  of  the  times.  The  president  of  a  great 
republic,  in  a  recent  book,  has  stated  that 
society  stands  in  a  position  to  reconstruct 
its  economics  from  top  to  bottom,  and  must 
so  reconstruct  them,  if  human  values  are  to 
be  maintained.  A  pohtical  leader  of  the 
greatest  empire  on  earth  has  pubhcly  as- 
serted that  there  is  no  occasion  for  want  in 
a  world  overflowing  with  abundance  for  all. 
A  few  years  ago  the  "abohtion  of  poverty" 
would  have  been  dismissed  as  chimerical. 
To-day  it  is  seriously  asserted  to  be  the  great 
problem  of  humanity,  not  only  for  the  state 
but  for  the  church  if  it,  too,  is  to  perform 
its  quota  in  preserving  Hfe. 

A  new  appreciation  of  human  worth  is 
also  to  be  found  in  the  gradually  changing 


114.     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

attitude  toward  war.  And  this  in  spite  of 
the  European  turmoil  where  the  "sword 
drawn  for  peace"  is  its  claim  for  justifica- 
tion. When  human  hfe  is  appreciated  at 
its  full  face  value  no  nation  will  be  permitted 
to  declare  war. 

One  of  the  hardest  lessons  to  learn  is  what 
to  revere  and  what  to  reject  in  the  past. 
The  socially  awakened  woman  rejects  the 
idea  that  all  nations  are  natural  enemies 
and  must  sleep  on  their  arms.  No  longer 
does  she  cherish  the  military  hero  as  an  ideal 
toward  which  to  train  her  sons.  She  recog- 
nizes fully  his  past  value  and  glory,  but 
regards  his  trappings,  preserved  in  the 
museums — the  army  coat,  the  saddle,  the 
skeleton  of  his  famous  horse — ^much  as  she 
regards  prehistoric  skeletons  shown  under 
the  same  roof:  necessary  in  organic  evolu- 
tion but  now  outgrown. 

That  the  military  hero  is  passing  as  an 
ideal  was  well  illustrated  at  a  recent  village 
improvement  meeting.  (One  indication  of 
improvement  was  that  women  were  allowed 
to  attend  I)     A  leading  citizen  proposed  an 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  115 

appropriation  of  $1,500  to  build  a  new 
soldiers'  monument. 

"The  present  monument  looks  like  a  lead 
pencil,"  he  began.  "We  need  a  large,  im- 
pressive new  monument  to  keep  before  the 
eyes  of  our  growing  boys.  If  we  don't  build 
it,  no  one  will  do  so.  The  present  generation 
doesn't  seem  to  care  a  twopence  about 
soldiers'  monuments." 

"And  the  next  generation  will  care  less," 
a  sweet-faced,  gray-haired  woman  said,  as 
she  arose.  "Wliy  go  backward?  Why 
waste  money?  We  need  that  $1,500  to  help 
educate  better  men."  The  question  of  a  new 
soldiers'  monument  was  laid  upon  the  table, 
not  to  be  reconsidered. 

In  this  connection  it  is  gratifying  to  recall 
that  the  first  Peace  Conference  was  held  in 
the  realm  of  a  woman.  Queen  Wilhelmina, 
of  Holland;  that  the  Nobel  peace  prize  of 
$40,000  has  been  won  by  a  woman,  the 
Baroness  von  Suttner,  with  her  book.  Lay 
Down  Your  Arms;  and  that  all  peace 
movements  themselves  have  met  with  the 
hearty  cooperation  of  women  wherever  the 


116     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

present  circuitous  methods  of  indirection 
will  allow. 

It  does  not  affect  the  truth  of  the  conten- 
tion that  war  is  outgrown  to  instance  cases 
of  the  recent  Balkan  and  European  wars 
where  atrocities  were  perpetrated  as  in 
primitive  times.  Atrocities  are  the  con- 
comitant of  war.  They  follow  as  the  night 
the  day.  The  fact  remains  that  historically 
the  race  has  discarded  military  warfare 
as  the  best  means  of  progress.  In  some 
localities  horse  cars  are  still  used.  Advanced 
communities,  however,  employ  electric 
power.  To-day  the  sober  sense  of  the  civil- 
ized world  realizes  that  war  is  regress,  not 
progress. 

In  her  attitude  against  perpetuating  the 
spirit  of  militarism  the  modern  woman  does 
not  claim  that  conflict  has  been  outgrown. 
Its  realm  only  has  been  transferred.  As  the 
struggle  for  existence  among  individuals  is 
largely  for  bread  and  butter,  so  that  among 
nations  has  become  chiefly  economic.  The 
battlefield  of  to-day  is  for  trade  supremacy. 
The  markets  of  the  world  are  the  spoils. 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  117 

Witness  the  European  struggle — on  the  one 
side  an  effort  to  get  markets,  on  the  other 
an  effort  to  keep  them.  As  Professor 
Vernon  Kellogg,  in  Beyond  War,  has 
indicated  that,  biologically,  through  brain 
acumen,  the  human  species  has  outgrown 
physical  combat,  so  Norman  Angell, 
in  his  epoch-making  book,  The  Great 
Illusion,  has  shown  that,  in  economics  and 
industry,  a  conquering  nation  may  yet  be 
commercially  wrecked  by  the  reactionary 
effect  of  modern  warfare. 

The  pubhc  mind  emerges  slowly  from 
under  the  juggernaut  of  its  long-cherished 
illusions.  But  the  evolutionist  is  patient.  He, 
and  at  last  she,  knows  that  the  wheels  of 
state,  once  lifted  out  of  the  mire  of  material- 
ism and  self-destruction,  are  bound  to  move 
on  toward  broader  highways,  unclouded  by 
the  smoke  of  cannon,  unpolluted  by  the 
stench  of  human  blood. 

In  the  minds  of  many  modern  men  and 
women — dreamers,  perhaps,  yet  rulers  of 
destiny  and  practical  conservers  of  human- 
ity— there  exists  the  vision  of  a  not  impos- 


118     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

sible  to-morrow  when  one  fleet  will  serve  the 
federated  peoples  of  the  world,  an  inter- 
national guardian  of  the  pubhc  peace  sent  to 
discipline  wayward  children  among  nations. 

The  voice  of  the  socially  responsive 
woman,  in  spite  of  the  handicap  of  disen- 
franchisement,  is  making  itself  heard  in 
pubhc  affairs,  affairs  which  are  in  reality 
private  since  they  affect  so  directly  the 
family  and  the  home.  How  much  longer, 
this  voice  is  inquiring,  will  the  public  mind 
elect  to  be  led  by  statesmen  cast  in  molds 
obsolete,  confessedly  ignorant  of  the  modem, 
scientific  point  of  view?  How  much  longer 
will  humanity  submit  to  secret  diplomacy, 
sheepishly  Hfting  its  back  to  be  sheared 
for  revenue  to  maintain  showy  armaments — 
national  playthings,  seldom  used,  yet  foster- 
ing by  psychic  suggestion  all  the  effete 
pomps  and  glories  of  war?  Above  all,  how 
much  longer  will  it  allow  its  national  wealth, 
the  manhood  of  the  race,  to  be  crushed  out, 
while  the  alloy  of  the  unfit  and  the  rejected 
remain  to  produce  a  spurious  human  strain? 

The  last  and  most  hopeful  sign  of  the 


REVALUATION  OF  LIFE  119 

revaluation  of  life  lies  in  the  birth  of  the 
new  science  of  Eugenics.  So  vital  is  the 
relationship  of  this  science  to  an  improved 
race  that  it  has  been  claimed  that  if  its  sig- 
nificance were  recognized  no  other  reforms 
would  be  needed.  A  true  eugenist  could  in 
no  way  circumscribe  hfe. 

Only  eugenics  goes  to  the  root  of  con- 
servation by  improving  the  inner  qualities 
of  mankind.  For  the  science  of  eugenics 
is  not  merely  physical.  It  is  highly  psy- 
chical and  spiritual.  Eugenics  invokes  all 
the  powers  of  man  by  directing  attention  to 
the  selection  of  those  physical,  mental,  and 
spiritual  quahties  which  contribute  to  the 
perfecting  of  human  values. 

We  have  seen  that  in  past  eras  the  idea 
that  human  life  is  wealth  held  no  sway.  In 
the  middle  ages  we  found  it  had  gained  only 
a  glimmer  of  recognition.  To-day  we  dis- 
cover the  faint,  well-directed  beginnings,  at 
least,  of  its  conservation. 

The  noblest  ideal  known  is  one  of  men 
and  women,  joint  originators  of  hfe  and 
jointly  responsible  for  its  wastage,  combin- 


120     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

ing  forces  to  revalue  and  conserve  it. 
Neither  sex  alone  may  completely  guard  the 
frontier  of  human  spoliation.  The  lesson 
of  1914  is  proof.  The  voice  of  the  matriarch 
must  be  added  to  the  council  of  the 
patriarchs.  Then,  mayhap,  when  this  dual 
human  mind  works  in  happy,  racial  imison, 
the  principle,  "There  is  no  wealth  but  life," 
may  become,  not  the  sentiment  of  a  literary 
visionary,  but  an  ultimate  of  practical, 
workable  truth. 


THE    AWAKENING    OF    THE 

SENSE      OF     RACE 

RESPONSIBILITY 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Relation  of  Woman  to  Eugenics 

That  the  awakening  of  woman  should 
be  followed  by  a  growing  conviction  of 
race  responsibility  is  to  be  expected.  Also 
that  this  new  human  appreciation  should 
relate  itself  to  the  compelling  power  of  love. 

When  the  stirring  charm  of  The  Prisoner 
of  Zenda  captured  the  reading  world  some 
years  ago,  a  concluding  chapter  entitled,  "If 
Love  Were  All,"  wnmg  the  heartstrings  of 
every  sympathetic  reader.  Rasendjd,  a 
strolling  Englishman,  with  the  red-gold, 
Hapsburg  coloring,  by  urgent  request  had 
successfully  impersonated  the  worthless  king 
of  Ruritania  and  had  unexpectedly  won  the 
Princess  Flavia's  heart.  Yet  these  two 
noble  persons,  so  deeply  immersed  in  each 
other,  tacitly  agreed  that  renunciation  was 
their  only  course.  They  could  not  commit  a 
wrong  to  the  state  by  consummating  a  de- 
ception; they  could  not  trick  the  people  by 

123 


124     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

introducing  alien  blood  into  the  lineage.  In 
short,  the  lineal  ideal  became  more  impera- 
tive than  the  personal.  And  the  romantic 
reader,  while  chafing  at  the  separation  of 
true  lovers,  inwardly  admired  the  fortitude 
and  the  principle  shown. 

The  science  of  eugenics  is  an  effort  to 
inject  regard  for  race  into  individual  love 
in  order  to  estabHsh  a  new  pride  of  descent. 
Instead  of  denying  love,  eugenics  asserts 
that  "love  is  all,"  but  it  must  be  personal  and 
racial  love,  deeply  conscious  of  power  and  of 
responsibility. 

If  the  Princess  Flavia  had  lived  to-day 
and  had  learned  of  this  new  ideal,  her  course 
might  have  been  different.  She  might 
have  led  Rasendyl  rather  than  be  led  by 
him.  She  might  have  declared  that  a  royal 
pedigree  should  not  be  perpetuated  when  it 
has  nothing  but  decadence  to  transmit.  She 
might  have  refused  to  mother  the  children  of 
an  alcoholic  degenerate,  even  though  he  were 
king.  "Better  to  renounce  the  throne  than 
to  commit  a  crime  against  the  human  family 
by  poisoning  the  strain,"  she  would  say,  if 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  125 

she  were  a  true  eugenist  according  to  the 
ethical  definition  of  the  term. 

^Eugenicg  ^>  thp  ^'^■■' '  "^'^'■■'"     As  such  it 
behooves  every  true  lover  of  his  kind  to  in- 
form himself  as  to  its  principles.    That  the 
ethical  interpretation  is  not  generally  ac- 
cepted does  not  invahdate  it.     The  science 
is  new  and  but  little  understood.     Under- 
neath  the   outer   materialism   of   eugenics 
lies  the  inner  flame  of  the  most  obligatory 
moral  and  ethical  duty — the  duty  of  each  to  ^ 
improve  the  quahty  of  life  itself.  "Eugenics  ^  ff^ 
is  the  science  which  deals  with  the  influences     "^"^ 
that  improve  the  inborn   qualities  of  the 
race." 

The  woman's  movement,  in  reahty  a  race 
movement,  is  an  effort  toward  a  more 
ethical  interpretation  of  life  and  of  love. 
It  is  an  effort  to  establish  a  truer  equihbrium 
between  men  and  women,  especially  in  re- 
gard to  the  past  overemphasis  of  sex.  The 
all-round,  symmetrically  developed  woman 
of  to-day  wishes  to  be  loved  for  her  human, 
social  value,  rather  than  for  her  face  and 
sex  value  as  of  old.     In  this  attitude  she 


126     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

claims  to  have  lost  none  of  her  inherent  at- 
tributes— since  sex,  as  some  one  has  said,  is 
not  a  thing  that  rubs  off — but  rather  to  have 
gained  in  human  emotional  qualities  that 
go  to  complete  character  and  make  up  race 
values. 

The  birth  of  the  science  of  eugenics  bears 
a  significant  relation  to  the  feminist  awak- 
ening. The  same  century  ushered  in  the 
dawn  of  both.  The  fullness  of  time,  the 
ripeness  of  ideas,  a  transformed  social  order, 
were  necessary  before  these  movements,  so 
distinctively  educational  in  purpose,  could 
gain  ground. 

That  eugenics  is  to  help  women  in  their 
struggle  for  spiritual  freedom  is  as  true  as 
that  women  are  to  help  eugenics.  To  com- 
prehend the  manner  of  the  help  the  science 
must  be  taken  in  a  positive,  rather  than  in 
the  popular  negative  understanding.  Also 
it  must  be  imderstood  to  have  no  quarrel 
with  the  human  heart.  We  read  of  the 
prohibitions  of  eugenics,  of  segregation,  and 
the  prevention  of  the  multiplication  of  the 
unfit,  negations  important  to  consider.  But 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  127 

the  unfit,  like  the  crimmal  class,  represent 
but  a  small  proportion  of  humanity.  Posi- 
tive eugenics  is  the  more  vital,  teaching  that 
the  mass  of  the  population  should  increase 
consciously  and  wisely;  that  public  opinion 
should  be  educated  until  it  becomes  as  im- 
possible for  one  to  profane  the  race  as  to 
stain  one's  own  name.  It  is  not  enough  that 
the  undesirable  must  not  transmit  impaired 
hfe.  The  desirable  must  transmit  better  hfe, 
and  increasingly  better,  with  all  children  the 
offspring  of  an  open-eyed,  not  a  blindfolded, 
love. 

Eugenics  is  the  science  of  an  improved 
race.  The  race  is  the  outcome  of  sex.  One 
cannot  improve  the  race,  eugenics  asserts, 
unless  one  imderstands  the  scientific  princi- 
ples of  sex.  A  few  years  ago  physicians, 
surgeons,  genealogists,  biologists,  reformers, 
and  other  scientific  men  began  to  discuss 
sex  as  they  discussed  all  other  race  ques- 
tions, in  the  light  of  reason  and  fact.  To  go 
on  pretending  and  ignoring  was  unscientific, 
and  Science  is  the  only  standard  to  which 
these  men  bowed.     But  because  they  per- 


128     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

sisted,  because  in  the  name  of  the  new 
humanity  they  exhorted,  agitated,  and  even 
dramatized  sex  and  its  problems,  the  taboo 
on  sex  is  passing,  the  ancient  curse  has  fallen 
away  from  woman,  never,  we  hope,  to  return. 
To-day  it  is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  a  woman, 
confidently,  not  apologetically,  female.  The 
shame  lies  only  in  denying  the  privilege  of 
sex — love  and  motherhood — which  sex  com- 
pletion implies. 

Following  logically  the  removal  of  the  sex 
taboo  came  the  new  questioning  of  the  double 
moral  standard.  For  years  interrogations 
as  to  the  justice  of  this  standard  had  been 
whispered.  To-day,  these  whisperings  have 
grown  into  a  loud  challenge,  from  men 
themselves — the  minority  interested  in  race 
improvement — a  cry  from  the  housetops  of 
the  world,  protesting:  "Away  with  moral 
duahtyl  Away  with  race  pollution  and 
infection  I  One  cannot  cleanse  a  channel  by 
sending  crystal  water  through  it  on  the  one 
side  and  devastating  poison  on  the  other." 
The  strongest  champions  of  the  racially 
developed  woman  of  to-day  are  men  of 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  129 

science  who,  by  pointing  out  the  ensuing 
evils,  have  decided  that  the  dual  moral 
standard,  like  the  taboo,  must  go. 

From  the  modern  Sinai  of  Science  these 
men  are  thundering  the  new  commandments 
of  sex  life  to  women  as  well  to  men. 
Eugenics  has  invaded  the  home  where  the 
protected  mother  now  sits  too  often  alone, 
a  shepherdess  forsaken  by  her  flock,  and 
stripping  the  conventionally  trained  youth 
of  attractions  that  in  many  cases  have  con- 
cealed unspeakable  disease  and  decay,  has 
commanded,  "Woman,  behold  yoiu*  son!  He 
is  not  the  other  woman's,  as  you  have  so 
complacently  thought.  He  is  yours.  How 
have  you  safeguarded  him?  You  who  have 
generated  must  also  regenerate.  In  the 
world,  as  in  the  cradle,  responsibility  is  still 
yours." 

Ignorance  of  life  no  longer  excuses  the 
inaction  and  contributory  negligence  of 
parents.  Eugenics  has  thrown  down  the 
walls  in  forbidden  places  and  disclosed  the 
unsavory  truth.  Once  informed  of  these 
evils  it  is  inconceivable  that  a  parent  should 


130     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

examine  the  financial  status  of  his  daughter's 
suitor  without  a  searching  inquiry  as  to  his 
health  and  moral  character.  With  this 
knowledge,  such  a  parent  will  have  stirred 
within  him  an  imperative  new  sense  of  moral 
obligation  to  his  children  and  to  the  race. 
He  may  even  remove  from  his  daughter's 
hands  Tennyson's  Dream  of  Fair  Women, 
bound  in  limp  suede,  and  place  there  for  her 
future  guide  the  stiff  realities  of  life  con- 
tained in  Percy  Mackaye's  eugenic  drama, 
To-morrow.  And  to  his  son  he  will  present 
Brieux's  relentless  excerpt  of  life.  Damaged 
Goods,  and  be  sure  that  he  reads  it.  The 
new  ethics  demands  that  parents  themselves 
shall  insist  that  love  no  longer  be  blind. 

Eugenics  is  contributing  to  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  new  mother  by  dividing  the 
ethical  responsibility  of  parenthood  in  em- 
phasizing fatherhood.  In  the  past,  when 
parenthood  has  been  mentioned,  by  tacit 
consent  motherhood  has  been  implied. 
Fatherhood  was  often  a  nebulous  ideal, 
necessary,  of  course,  but  seldom  actively 
realized.     The  loud  pedal  was  held  down 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  131 

hard  on  motherhood  with  the  result  that  the 
training  of  children  often  assumed  too 
feminine  a  key.  Ethical  eugenics  declares 
that  parenthood  requires  also  the  deep  tones 
of  the  father  if  the  truest  harmonies  in  the 
family  symphony  of  the  future  are  to  be 
sounded.  Parenthood  must  be  not  only 
materially  but  also  spiritually  shared. 

In  a  social  order  where  men  were  special- 
ized to  commercial  life  and  women  to  house 
labor  and  childbearing,  such  a  lack  of 
parental  equipoise  was  inevitable.  And  the 
child  has  suffered.  For  the  all-round  de- 
velopment of  the  child,  in  the  earliest  most 
impressionable  years,  demands  the  mascu- 
hne  interpretation  of  hfe  as  well  as  the 
feminine;  requires  masculine  discipline, 
masculine  guidance,  masculine  adjustment 
to  problems  if  we  are  to  have  a  balanced 
progression. 

At  a  summer  resort  recently  a  lady  said, 
humorously,  to  a  young  mother,  "Your  hus- 
band admires  the  children,  but  seems  to  think 
that  they  are  yours."  It  was  true.  The 
short  time  that  the  father  saw  his  children 


132     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

morning  and  evening,  separated  by  the  day's 
routine,  gave  him  no  sense  of  possessing 
them.  To  the  children,  the  tie  between  them 
was  largely  material.  Father  represented 
power  to  provide  food  and  clothing,  a  kind 
of  animated  cash  register.  So  far  as  ethical 
responsibihty  is  concerned,  in  many  cases 
the  male  parent  has  been  a  married  man  and 
a  bachelor  at  the  same  time. 

The  woman  of  to-day  has  often  been  ac- 
cused of  shirking  motherhood.  Such  women, 
sensationally  limelighted,  are  in  a  minority. 
We  do  not  hear  of  those  heavy-hearted 
women  whose  passionate  wish  for  mother- 
hood is  ungranted.  A  visit  to  an  expert  in 
obstetrics  will  reveal  their  number.  A  sor- 
row's crown  of  sorrows  is  motherhood 
denied.  As  for  those  abnormal  women  who 
do  not  wish  offspring,  they  may  be  balanced 
by  men  who  shirk  fatherhood — men  who 
prefer  a  wife  unhampered  by  family  cares; 
men  who  wish  for  quiet  in  their  homes  or 
else  balk  at  the  expense  of  children,  no  in- 
considerable item  in  the  well-cared-for  child 
of  to-day.    The  standard  of  living  has  ad- 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  133 

vanced  here  as  in  other  departments.  Men 
and  women  of  this  type  are  egoists  and 
imeugenic.  The  only  hope  for  them  is  to 
teach  their  kind,  when  yomig,  the  higher 
racial  duty — the  happy  privilege  of  the  com- 
plete fruition  of  love. 

Eugenics,  lastly,  is  promoting  the  aims  of 
feminism  by  dispelling  that  age-long 
chimera,  the  "mystery  of  sex."  Curiosity, 
combined  with  ignorance,  is  responsible  for 
two  thirds  of  the  wrongdoing  of  youth.  The 
other  third  may  be  attributed  to  natural 
depravity,  though  we  doubt  if  the  apportion- 
ment is  so  large.  The  unknown  is  always 
fascinating.  The  spirit  of  man  moves 
swiftly  to  meet  adventure,  even  in  the  young 
boy.  "I  did  not  know,"  was  the  excuse 
offered  by  the  hero  of  Damaged  Goods  when 
he  gazed  at  the  family  wreckage  he  had 
caused — forgetting  the  doctor's  warning. 
"I  did  not  know,"  was  the  excuse  of  every 
human  derehct  whom  the  physician  sum- 
moned in  turn  to  pass  before  the  young 
wife's  father.  By  throwing  the  searchhght 
of  science  on  these  vices  and  showing  that 


134     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

their  results  are  not  merely  temporary  and 
personal,  but  far-reaching  and  racial,  eugen- 
ics is  performing,  not  only  for  women,  but 
also  for  humanity,  the  most  vital  service. 
When  the  high  aim  of  generation  is  under- 
stood, it  assumes  place  in  the  mind  of  the 
young  in  the  order  of  natural  phenomena, 
no  more  mysterious  than  Harvey's  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  or  the  process  of  digestion 
and  assimilation,  yet  invested  with  a  spiritual 
beauty  that  lifts  it  to  the  realm  of  the 
Divine.  For  the  normal  health  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  community,  as  well  as  for 
posterity,  it  is  necessary  that  the  laws  con- 
trolling all  physical  processes  should  be 
scientifically  made  clear. 

Eugenics  declares  that  it  is  an  unthinking, 
irresponsible  mother  to-day  who  does  not, 
herself,  impart  to  her  little  ones  acquaint- 
ance with  these  supposed  "mysteries  of  hfe" 
before  the  sensitive  child-mind  is  polluted 
by  hearing  the  laws  of  creation  first  whis- 
pered in  dark  corners  as  hfe*s  indecencies 
and  causes  for  shame.  It  is  often  the  first 
contact  with  a  subject  that  counts  and  colors 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  136 

it  for  all  time.  To-day  there  is  nothing  in 
sex  nor  in  the  racial  instincts  to  be  ashamed 
of,  except  "To  be  ashamed  of  being 
ashamed."  Nor  does  knowledge  destroy 
innocence;  it  rather  maintains  the  needed 
spiritual  type,  true  innocence  of  mind.  The 
most  crystalline  purity  conceivable  is  the 
mind  of  a  Httle  child.  No  greater  crime 
exists  than  to  stain  it  morally.  Eugenics 
says  that  knowledge  of  Godlike  function 
alone  will  keep  the  mind  pure.  The  calm 
acceptance  of  the  facts  of  nature  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  child-mind,  just  as  a  confid- 
ing faith  that  the  world  is  benevolently  in- 
clined toward  him — as  opposed  to  the  adult 
belief  that  every  man's  hand  is  against  him 
— is  another  characteristic  of  childhood. 

No  mother  who  has  had  the  experience 
of  initiating  her  children  into  the  knowl- 
edge of  great  natural  processes  will  fail  to 
bear  witness  that  the  effect  has  been  to 
cement  still  closer  the  bond  between  them. 
This  is  particularly  true  between  mother 
and  son.  No  boy  learns  that  his  mother 
loved  him  before  she  saw  him,  bearing  him 


136     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

long  under  her  heart,  nourishing  him  with 
her  hfe's  blood,  fashioning  him  according  to 
Nature's  marvelous  sculptoring;  that  she 
grieved  at  giving  him  over  to  a  world  where 
she  could  no  longer  entirely  enfold  and  pro- 
tect him — no  lad  learns  these  truths  without 
the  little  heart  responding  in  a  flood  of  new 
tenderness  toward  this  magical  mother- 
creator. 

Two  objections  are  entered  against  the 
eugenic  method  of  substituting  knowledge 
for  ignorance  in  children.  The  first  lies  in 
the  power  of  suggestion,  an  imperative  prin- 
ciple, most  potent,  without  doubt.  May  not 
an  early  explanation  of  sex,  it  is  maintained 
by  the  behevers  in  the  old  ethics  of  silence, 
suggest  to  a  child  an  evil  not  otherwise 
present  in  consciousness?  There  is  plausi- 
bility in  this  objection.  The  remedy  seems 
to  be  in  answering  the  questions  of  the 
inquiring  mind  as  they  appear  naturally, 
never  forcing  or  overweighing  them  by 
revealing  too  much  at  one  time,  and  never 
overemphasizing  sex.  Between  the  possi- 
bilities for  suggestion  in  the  new  method 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  137 

of  parental  frankness,  and  the  certainty  of 
criminal  racial  negligence  in  the  old  way  of 
sexual  silence,  the  eugenist  declares  there  is 
no  room  for  choice. 

"A  sense  of  shame"  may  be  protective  and 
valuable,  as  behevers  in  the  old  idea  claim, 
but  only  if  the  child  has  done  something 
to  be  morally  ashamed  of,  not  for  the  posses- 
sion of  sex  functions,  he  does  not  under- 
stand. Nor  does  the  appeal  for  parental 
frankness  and  mutual  understanding  ex- 
tend to  a  complete  abolition  of  reticence  on 
matters  of  sex.  Good  taste  maintains  still 
in  people  of  refinement,  while  bad  taste 
reigns  in  the  vulgar  or  coarse-grained. 
*' These  laws  of  nature  are  true,  but  so 
private  and  intimate  that  we  do  not  discuss 
them  generally,"  is  supplemented  by  the 
careful  mother  in  allowing  herself  the  privi- 
lege of  enlightening  her  child.  Also  knowl- 
edge of  sex  is  valueless  unless  accompanied 
by  knowledge  of  the  necessity  for  self- 
control.  Nothing  appeals  more  strongly 
to  the  child-mind  than  consciousness  of  a 
sense  of  power.     The  line  of  mastery  of 


138     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

self  and  of  circumstances  may  at  this  time 
be  indicated  and  inculcated  through  an  early 
introduction  to  the  control  of  the  human 
will.  Control  and  self-direction,  through 
knowledge  of  self,  is  the  first  aid  to  con- 
scious character-building  in  the  child. 

The  second  objection  to  sex-candor  is 
more  mature  and  so  more  subtle.  If  the 
"mystery  of  sex"  be  removed,  as  contended 
even  by  race  lovers,  one  of  the  chief  charms 
of  hfe  will  be  destroyed — the  attraction  of 
one  sex  for  the  other.  If  this  were  true  it 
would,  indeed,  be  deplorable.  But  is  it  true? 
Is  not  the  real  source  of  attraction  found  in 
the  mysterious  charm  of  temperament  rather 
than  in  the  drawing  power  of  sex?  Many 
beautiful  women  are  not  magnetic,  though 
distinctively  feminine.  In  reality  there  is 
little  "mystery"  in  predicting  the  vagaries  of 
sex.  Its  course  is  frankly  limited,  whereas  a 
thousand  lenses  reflect  the  changing  atti- 
tudes and  lures  of  temperament,  which  may 
never  be  definitely  foretold.  The  wells  of 
sex  may  soon  be  fathomed.  The  oceans 
of  temperament  are  never  sounded.  Rather 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  139 

are  they  heights  than  depths,  since  sex  is 
physical  and  temperament  is  spiritual.  Man 
will  never  find  woman  an  "open  page"  easily 
deciphered — ^which  seems  to  be  a  lurking 
masculine  dread — so  long  as  temperaments 
have  freedom  to  develop  varying  personali- 
ties. The  woman  of  to-day  may,  if  she 
chooses,  charm  in  a  thousand  roles  instead 
of  only  one,  as  of  old.  Will  she  choose?  She 
is  no  longer  economically  compelled  to  do  so. 
May  not  the  time  come  when  the  "business 
of  being  a  woman"  will  be  to  inspire  a  man's 
soul  rather  than  to  charm  his  senses?  Only 
when  love  is  held  fast  by  this  inviolate,  un- 
purchasable  attraction  of  spirit  does  it  be- 
come, indeed,  "all." 

Eugenics,  then,  has  ministered  to  the 
ideals  of  an  ethically  awakened  womanhood 
by  disclosing  the  evils  of  the  double  moral 
standard;  by  dividing  the  moral  responsi- 
bihty  of  parenthood  in  emphasizing  father- 
hood; and  by  insistence  on  substituting 
scientific  knowledge  of  self  for  ignorance 
and  thus  abolishing  that  will-o'-the-wisp,  the 
physiological  "mystery  of  sex."     On  the 


140     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

other  hand,  what  may  the  enhghtened  woman 
do  for  eugenics? 

The  final  Court  of  Appeal  in  all  human 
actions  is  Public  Opinion.  We  cannot 
legislate  the  public  mind  into  higher  ethical 
states.  But  we  can  educate  it.  Woman's 
greatest  contribution  to  the  new  science  will 
be  to  aid  in  a  general  publicity  campaign 
of  education  supported  by  facts  furnished 
by  scientific  and  social  experts. 

To  mold  the  public  opinion  of  to-morrow 
we  must  train  the  mind  of  the  child  of 
to-day.  In  cooperating  with  eugenics  in 
this  particular  the  awakened  woman  would 
plead  for  a  greater  amount  of  science  incor- 
porated early  into  school  life,  and  partic- 
ularly for  the  teaching  of  the  science  of 
organic  evolution.  The  value  of  science  is 
that  it  deals  with  law.  The  value  of  teach- 
ing organic  evolution  lies  in  the  fact  that 
its  principles  deal  with  the  organic  develop- 
ment of  hfe  itself.  And  the  principles  of 
life  are  also  the  principles  of  love.  Only  in 
this  way  may  a  child  learn,  naturally,  of  the 
laws  of  his  own  being,  of  the  suffering  he 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  141 

causes  himself  and  others  if  he  break  these 
laws,  and  so  of  his  relation  to  the  universe. 
When  he  reaHzes  his  place  at  the  top  of  the 
cosmic  scale,  a  new  spiritual  dignity  enfolds 
him.  The  racial  instincts  fall  naturally  into 
place,  the  "mysteries  of  sex"  being  dispelled 
by  the  wonders  of  natural  and  spiritual 
sequence.  That  these  instincts  are  not  to  be 
dissipated  but  are  to  be  conserved  and  conse- 
crated to  the  highest  personal  and  social  ends, 
seems  natural  and  inevitable.  That  they  may 
no  longer  be  ignored,  if  a  conscious,  higher 
development  is  to  be  attained,  is  certain. 
Life  is  not  merely  a  science.  It  is  an  art, 
with  a  technique  of  Hving  that  must  be 
acquired,  consciously  or  unconsciously. 
Which  is  the  better  way — to  blunder  along, 
deliberately  held  in  ignorance  of  principles 
that  govern  conduct,  absorbing  knowledge 
at  the  price  of  bitter  personal  experience  and 
blighting  social  cost,  or  to  learn  the  beauty 
of  self-mastery  through  obedience  to  law, 
of  happy  self -direction  to  a  desired  goal? 

After  teaching  a  child  the  scientific  truths 
regarding  its  own  being,  the  ethically  devel- 


142     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

oped  mother  would  awaken  early  a  sense  of 
individual  moral  responsibility.  A  boy 
should  be  taught  that  he  is  a  Godlike  creator, 
responsible  to  society  for  what  he  creates. 
A  girl  should  learn  that  she  is  not  only  a 
co-creator,  but  that  her  body  is  the  channel 
through  which  posterity  must  pass,  and  that 
the  channel  must  be  kept  pure.  A  spirit  of 
personal  responsibility,  absorbed  early  by 
the  plastic  mind  of  the  young,  reacts 
far  more  strongly  later  in  the  adult  than 
tardy  legal  compulsion  when  character  is 
already  formed.  The  ethics  of  sex,  as  well 
as  the  ethics  of  love,  is  not  yet  fully  realized. 
And  children,  with  their  peculiar  respon- 
siveness to  idealism,  should  absorb  these 
ethics  through  every  pore,  until  the  ethical 
becomes  the  normal,  controlling  and  direct- 
ing the  physical  instead  of  being  blindly  con- 
trolled by  it.  But  will  not  knowledge 
destroy  the  "bloom  on  the  peach"  in  the 
child  mind?  Aspiration  never  destroys.  It 
rejects  the  counterfeit  for  the  real.  Yet  if  it 
did,  surely  "bloom,"  often  artificial,  is  not  so 
essential  to  growth  as  rooting  out  the  moral 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  143 

decay  that  has  long  eaten  at  the  heart  of  the 
social  core,  often  under  a  rosy  exterior. 

All  ideas  to-day  may  be  classed  as  social 
or  antisocial.  The  child  must  early  learn 
that  the  law  of  self-gratification  alone,  in 
any  form,  is  antisocial.  We  are  members 
of  a  closely  knit  social  organism  as  well  as 
of  a  sex.  The  doctrine  of  each  man  for  him- 
self, a  survival  of  the  old  tooth  and  claw, 
me-and-mine  tenet,  must  give  way  to  the 
modern  creed  of  each  for  all.  Utopian? 
Every  new  idea  is  called  Utopian  until 
proved  of  greater  practical  value  than  the 
old.  The  plan  of  free  schools,  free  play- 
grounds, free  hospitals,  free  social  service 
was  once  all  considered  Utopian.  Human- 
ity progresses  only  as  the  whole  army  of 
mankind  is  enabled  to  move  forward, 
usually  by  so-called  Utopian  tactics.  The 
Utopian  is  the  spiritual,  and  the  spiritual  is 
the  practical  for  a  species  evolving  on  a 
psychical  plane. 

Finally,  the  modem  woman  would  con- 
tribute to  eugenics  by  training  the  young  to 
a  higher  form  of  selection  in  love  and  mar- 


lU     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

riage,  especially  among  the  girls.  Selective 
love  must  replace  random  love.  Spirit  must 
direct  if  love  is  to  be  "all,"  as  it  should  be. 
The  Flavias  of  the  future  must  be  conscious 
of  their  transcendent  power  to  rehabihtate 
the  race. 

The  aim  of  eugenics  is  seen  to  be  racial 
and  ethical.  The  aim  of  the  Woman's 
Movement,  a  race  movement,  highly  ethical, 
overflows  naturally  into  the  field  of  eugen- 
ics. To  introduce  into  the  precious  strain 
of  life  undesirable  citizens,  in  any  way  sub- 
normal, is  counter  to  the  high  purposes  of 
each  and  an  affront  to  so-called  love.  That 
both  movements  must  suffer  from  misunder- 
standing and  unwise  actions  on  the  part  of 
friends  as  well  as  enemies  is  to  be  expected. 
It  is  the  history  of  all  innovations.  As  the 
truth  vitalizes  them  they  will  be  enabled  to 
conquer  abuse  and  attack. 

In  this  day  of  bewildering  social  metamor- 
phosis one  fact  only  remains  unshaken :  men 
and  women  are  still  the  parents  of  the  race. 
Surely  that  is  a  fundamental  truth  worth 
clmging  to  and  should  bind  them  closer. 


RELATION  TO  EUGENICS  145 

They  rise  or  fall  together  as  they  discharge 
this  debt  of  imperative  obligation. 

The  spiritual  ideals  of  the  Woman's 
Movement,  then,  cannot  be  embodied  with- 
out a  wider  diffusion  and  comprehension  of 
the  science  of  eugenics.  And  eugenics  must 
suffer  partial  paralysis  unless  it  gain  the 
cooperation  of  the  thinking  woman  as  well 
as  the  thinking  man.  The  relation  of  woman 
to  eugenics  and  of  eugenics  to  woman  is, 
therefore,  one  of  strong  interdependence  if 
the  torch  of  love  and  life  is  to  be  handed  on 
pure  and  flaming,  and  the  high  ideals  of 
each  are  to  be  reahzed. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Natueal  and  Spiritual  Selection  in 
Mabeiage 

In  spite  of  current  discussion  of  race 
suicide,  in  spite  of  statistics  that  show 
the  increase  of  bachelors  and  the  aloof 
tendencies  of  bachelor  girls,  the  subject  of 
marriage  is  still  the  subject  of  paramount 
interest  to  both  sexes,  and  the  "way  of  a 
man  with  a  maid"  remains  the  most  fas- 
cinating of  all  ways. 

In  the  present  period  of  social  recon- 
struction, when  all  traditional  agencies  are 
regarded  with  suspicion,  it  is  inevitable  that 
marriage,  as  a  human  institution,  should  be 
challenged.  It  is  also  inevitable  that  many 
false  trails  should  be  followed,  many  will- 
o'-the  wisp  theories,  suggested  by  uninspired 
prophets  of  the  new  order,  should  flash 
inconsequently.  All  great  reconstructive 
movements  must  triumph  over  the  zeal  of 

148 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         147 

friendly  misinterpreters  as  well  as  over  the 
purposeful  opposition  of  foes. 

The  racially  quickened  woman  reahzes 
that  any  proposition  to  abohsh  marriage  is 
not  only  stupid  but  unscientific.  We  must 
learn,  here,  from  nature,  whether  we  would 
or  not.  The  institution  of  marriage  is  of  all 
institutions  the  most  ancient  and  deep-rooted 
since  it  may  be  traced  to  our  animal  ances- 
tors, as  Westermarck  has  so  convincingly 
shown.  Wherever  the  prolongation  of  the 
period  of  infancy  necessitates  care  of  the 
young  from  both  parents — as  in  the  cases 
of  many  birds  and  higher  mammals — nature 
herself  has  instituted  some  form  of  family 
life.  So  long  as  it  is  of  advantage  to  the  child 
to  have  the  continuous  ministrations  of  one 
mother  and  of  one  father,  monogamous 
marriage  may  be  considered  as  permanent 
as  the  everlasting  hills.  Moreover,  the 
human  mind  hungrily  craves  monogamy. 
No  harem  even  is  without  its  white  rose — 
its  starry-eyed  favorite  and  queen.  All  the 
refractions  of  marriage  are  but  proofs  of  this 
great  natural  fact:  the  insatiable  craving  of 


148     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

one  man  for  one  woman  and  one  woman  for 
one  man  and  the  spirit's  imresting  search 
after  this  ideal,  with  the  feehng  of  "home" 
when  it  is  fomid.  For  home  is  not  a  thing 
of  brick  and  mortar.  It  is  the  reflection  of 
a  personahty.  "Home  is  not  a  hearth  but 
a  woman." 

The  awakened  woman  of  to-day  realizes 
that  the  difficulty  with  marriage  lies  in  its 
failure  to  conform  to  modern  requirements. 
And  this  inelasticity  is  found,  not  in  the 
institution  of  marriage  itself,  but  in  the 
hidebound  mind  of  mankind.  As  long 
as  marriage  still  reflects  masculine  pro- 
prietorship, a  survival  of  slavery,  as  long  as 
there  is  a  shadow  of  dependence — except 
lat  of  spirit  which  will  be  deeply  mutual — 
so  long  must  marriage  be  a  hard  and  fast 
compact  out  of  harmony  with  the  demands 
of  expanding  character  and  modem  life. 

As  for  the  restrictions  of  marriage,  these 
too  belong  largely  to  custom  and  to  the 
public  mental  attitude,  colored  by  tradition 
and  theology.  When  marriage  confers 
spiritual  freedom  and  equality  of 


SELECTION  IN  IMARRIAGE         149 

tunity  upon  both  partners,  the  bond  of  union 
will  not  be  clanking  chains.  In  the  past, 
marriage  meant  segregation,  the  entrance 
of  a  couple  into  a  species  of  domestic  cloister, 
with  no  other  choice,  especially  for  the 
woman,  but  to  take  the  veil.  To-day,  true 
marriage  should  mean  a  larger  Hf  e,  a  mutual 
stepping  out  into  the  world's  wonder  house 
for  both  participants,  and  a  happy  service 
in  performing  together  the  world's  needed 
tasks. 

Feminism  is  not  a  desire  to  establish  free 
love.  However  the  "emancipated"  woman 
may  shrink  from  the  surviving  abuses  of 
marriage;  however  she  may  desire  love's 
greater  freedom — a  freedom  that  is  surely 
dawning  through  the  increasing  economic 
opportunities  of  women — families  estab- 
lished "without  benefit  of  clergy"  are  not 
her  panacea  for  future  ills.  And  this,  again, 
partly  because  of  the  social  necessities  of 
the  child  which  demand  social  stability, 
social  permanence,  and  social  loyalty.  A 
woman  may  make  herself  a  pariah  for  the 
sake  of  a  great  love  if  she  wishes.     She 


150     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

has  no  right  to  jeopard  the  social  future  of 
her  child. 

The  greatest  disaster  the  woman's  move- 
ment could  bring,  both  to  itself  and  to  so- 
ciety, would  be  to  advocate  a  love  that  sought 
only  its  own  enhancement.  Such  a  love 
would  be  distinctively  unsocial.  Civilization 
advances  as  the  good  of  the  whole  is 
considered,  not  the  individual.  For  this 
reason  the  individual  often  has  to  suffer. 
But  spiritual  suffering  is  not  fatal,  nor  is  it 
so  dangerous  as  moral  chaos.  Spiritual 
suffering  is  the  furnace  for  forging  im- 
personal power.  An  individual  is  of  little 
value  to  himself  or  to  society  until  he  has 
died  to  his  own  will  and  arisen  universal  and 
triumphant.  The  law  of  hfe,  Goethe  tells 
us,  is,  "Thou  shalt  renounce,  and  renounce, 
and  renounce." 

Every  age  has  had  its  free-love  advocates, 
often  high-minded  souls,  ethically  rebellious. 
Mistaking  the  effect  of  marriage  on  certain 
ill-mated  temperaments  for  the  cause  of 
widespread  social  discontent,  they  propose 
a  form  of  promiscuity  more  disastrous  than 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         151 

anything  they  condemn.  True  feminism  is 
not  of  this  character.  Nor  should  it  be  held 
responsible  for  the  gnarled  theories  that  are 
grafted  on  its  spreading  boughs. 

The  thoughtful  woman  of  to-day  believes 
that  the  path  of  racial  advance  Hes,  not  in 
the  destruction  of  marriage,  but  in  its  im- 
provement through  the  substitution  of 
spiritual  for  material  standards  of  selection. 
In  this  attitude  she  is  upheld,  not  only  by  the 
eugenist,  but  by  the  biologic  and  sociologic 
science  of  the  day.  When  Sir  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace,  codiscoverer  with  Darwin 
of  the  theory  of  Natural  Selection,  in  his 
recent  book.  Social  Environment  and  Moral 
Progress,  declares  that  the  socially  developed 
woman,  through  "a  freer  p^wf^  ^^  splppt^nn 
in  marriage,"  must  be  the  "future  regener- 
ator of  the  entire  human  race,"  he  lays  a 
large  duty  upon  her — a  duty  the  scope  of 
which  she  must  feel  and  know.  Will  the 
modem  woman  rise  to  meet  this  far-reaching 
obhgation?  If  womanhood  is  racially  con- 
scientious, racially  ethical,  as  it  has  always 
been,  historically,  then  womanhood  must 


152     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

appreciate  clearly  what  is  meant  by  scien- 
tific selection,  weighing  well  its  claims  as  an 
adequate  process  for  an  improved  human 
family. 

What  is  this  tireless  process  of  endless 
creation  which  woman  is  advised  to  follow 
consciously  and  conscientiously?  Briefly, 
the  two  chief  characteristics  of  all  species 
are  power  to  vary  and  power  to  increase. 
Operating  through  these  attributes,  nature 
seized  upon  and  accentuated  those  charac- 
teristics of  greatest  advantage  in  perpetuat- 
ing a  species.  In  this  selective  manner, 
modified  by  heredity  and  adaptation  to 
environment,  innumerable  differentiating 
species  were  formed  from  those  already 
existing.  Nature  was  the  anvil  and  selection 
the  hammer  that,  descending  through  long 
centuries,  struck  out  countless  deflecting 
sparks.  The  distinguishing  traits  of  ani- 
mals, as  we  are  aware,  were  thus  formed, 
nature  seizing  upon  those  traits  of  greatest 
survival  value  in  perpetuity,  and  ascending 
mercilessly  upon  a  staircase  of  sacrificed 
millions  of  the  unfit. 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         153 

And  is  this  the  process  that  has  developed 
the  unlimited  powers  of  man?  Not  entirely. 
When  genus  homo  appeared,  a  new  element 
entered  and  evolution  took  a  different  course. 
From  that  time  on  the  variations  became 
psychical  rather  than  physical,  natural  selec- 
tion itself  giving  way  before  a  process  of 
greater  survival  value,  namely  mind  selec- 
tion, and  the  mastery  of  man  began.  The 
horse  offered  wings  for  the  desert — and  man 
bred  him  for  speed.  He  saw  in  the  cow  a 
multiple  mother — and  specialized  her  for 
food.  He  bade  the  waterfall  grind  his  corn ; 
and,  collecting  the  powdered  dust  of  heaven, 
weighed  the  distant  stars.  Instead  of  being 
subdued  and  controlled  by  nature,  man 
balanced  the  universe  on  his  palm  and 
laughed  at  space  and  force  and  time. 

But  had  human  selection  stopped  on  the 
plane  of  mind  the  power  of  man  would  have 
been  circumscribed.  Another  realm  re- 
mained to  be  conquered.  The  spirit  of  man 
flamed  forth,  too  great  to  be  limited  to  the 
interest  of  self.  To  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence was  added  a  new  and  humane  element 


154.     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

— the  astonishing  "struggle  for  the  existence 
of  others."  Savage  tribes  did  not  leave  their 
wounded  to  die.  They  bore  them  home  on 
boughs  and  apphed  soothing  herbs.  Man 
did  not  let  the  old,  the  weak,  the  unfit  perish. 
He  built  institutions  for  them.  And  human 
power  waxed  strong  in  proportion  as  it 
practiced  the  spiritual  qualities  of  mercy, 
and  altruism,  and  love. 

Nor  was  this  all.  By  the  power  of  the 
spirit  within  him,  man  discovered  not  only 
his  relation  to  the  outer  universe,  but  also 
discovered  his  relation  to  the  sources  of  inner 
strength.  He  discovered  himself.  He  was 
not  merely  a  body  with  strong  appetites,  and 
a  mind  that  could  conquer  matter.  He  was 
a  creative  spirit,  at  one  with  infinity.  Not 
only  could  he  develop  arts,  sciences,  reli- 
gions, but  gain  that  highest  of  all  suprema- 
cies— power  over  the  tempest  in  his  own  soul. 
He  learned  the  majesty  of  self-control,  the 
kingship  of  self-direction.  He  was  not 
only  a  thing  created.  He  himself  was  a 
creator.  He  was  not  the  plaything  of  evolu- 
tion.   He  was  its  master.    This  truth  became 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         155 

at  once  the  hope  and  the  glory  of  evolution : 
through  the  potentiahty  of  man's  self-direct- 
ing spirit  he  is  now  becoming  the  arbiter  of 
his  own  destiny,  master  of  his  fate,  captain 
of  his  soul.  Without  entering  into  any 
metaphysical  arguments  as  to  the  freedom 
of  the  will,  evolution  sweeps  aside  all  dis- 
cussions and  declares  that  man,  through  his 
unconquerable  spirit,  stands  at  the  pinnacle 
of  creation,  his  future  bounded  only  by  the 
circumference  of  his  own  will. 

Admitting  the  scientific  value  of  natural 
selection  as  a  principle  of  biological  improve- 
ment, and  also  the  value  of  spiritual  selection 
as  an  aid  to  social  progress,  how  is  this  higher 
selection  to  be  applied  to  marriage?  Is  a 
husband  to  be  selected  according  to  rule? 
Is  Eros  to  be  dogmatized  out  of  existence? 
No.  Yet  if  a  woman  select  the  father  of  her 
children  unmindful  of  the  relentless  laws  of 
science,  she  may  commit  a  crime  against 
society  and  sow  a  whirlwind  of  intense  per- 
sonal suffering  as  well. 

Before  applying  spiritual  selection  to 
marriage  as  a  working  principle,  let  us  first 


156     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

strip  the  word  spiritual  of  some  of  the 
barnacles  of  the  past.  Spirituality  is  not  to 
be  associated  with  psalters  and  sermons,  with 
incense  and  Sundays,  merely.  Spirituality 
is  above  all  for  the  laymen,  for  the  week  day, 
for  the  fireside,  and  for  the  daily  task.  It  is 
as  useful  to  the  man  with  the  hoe  as  the  man 
with  the  cassock.  As  a  means  to  an  end 
spiritual  force  is  the  most  practical  force  a 
human  being  possesses,  since  it  not  only 
generates  but  regenerates  man.  Manifes- 
tations of  spirit  may  differ.  The  power  is 
always  the  same,  the  fuel  is  all  within.  To 
"find  one's  self"  is  to  become  conscious  of 
this  inner  power,  and  to  gain  a  knowledge 
of  how  to  direct  it.  When  we  elect  to  find 
ourselves — and  it  is  all  a  matter  of  election 
— ^we  elect  to  become  spiritual,  to  become 
creative,  and  to  cooperate  with  evolution's 
highest  ends. 

Much  harm  has  resulted  from  the  doc- 
trine that  the  spiritual  is  not  the  natural. 
Modem  psychology  teaches  above  all  else 
the  unity  of  being.  It  teaches,  also,  that 
it  is  more  natural  for  man  to  aspire  than 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         157 

to  descend,  since  the  trend  of  nature  is 
upward.  All  the  prisons  and  pillories  of 
the  past,  great  accentuators  of  evil,  have 
not  sufficed  to  hold  man  down.  The  spirit 
of  man  gravitates  toward  the  good,  the 
true,  the  beautiful  as  the  sparks  fly  upward. 
Not  in  antagonism,  but  in  harmonious  uni- 
son, do  all  the  forces  of  being  find  full  play. 
Natural  and  spiritual  selection  are  not, 
therefore,  to  be  regarded  as  enemies  at  war- 
fare but  are  one  and  indissoluble,  twin 
branches  of  the  same  root,  demanding  equal 
recognition. 

Spiritual  selection  supplementing  natural 
selection  in  marriage  signifies,  then,  that 
marriage  is  a  psychical  as  well  as  a  physical 
contract.  It  implies  complete  and  unified 
character  selection.  Character  denotes  those 
dominating  quahties  that  the  individual  has 
grouped  to  constitute  personality.  Char- 
acter becomes,  thus,  spiritual  capital,  an 
investment  in  qualities  we  choose  to  possess. 

It  is  true  that  some  form  of  selection  in 
marriage  has  always  held  sway.  But  let  no 
one  assume  that  natural  selection  alone  was 


168     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

allowed  to  prevail.     Otherwise  should  we 
have  made  greater  progress.    Rather  have 
we  had  unnatural  selection,   according  to 
artificial  standards,  with  years  of  disadvan- 
tageous results.     In  earliest  times  we  had 
/      savage  selection,  women  being  appropriated, 
when  it  was  necessary,  through  the  persua- 
sion of  a  club.    Later  we  had  what  might  be 
I  ^     called  slave  selection,  marriage  by  purchase, 
a  man's  wives  being  chronicled  with  his  chat- 
tels, his  "men  servants  and  his  maid  servants, 
his  wives,  his  oxen,  and  his  asses."     This 
was  followed  by  a  form  of  parental  selec- 
J)        tion,  leaving  the  contracting  parties  little 
choice — a  method  still  maintaining  in  certain 
parts  of  the  world  as  illustrated  by  the  ar- 
ranged marriages   of  royalty — "marriages 
of  convenience" — so  notoriously  marriages 
1^  of  inconvenience  in  the  end.    Lastly,  we  have 

had  economic  selection,  a  method  inevitable 
where  marriage  meant  feminine  dependence 
for  sustenance,  the  woman's  sex  value  being 
exchanged  for  support.  This  has  led  to  one 
of  the  world's  most  widespread  social  evils — 
selection  for  material  or  financial  advantage 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         159 

— an  evil  that  may  not  be  overcome  in  a 
day  since  it  involves  changes  in  the  world's 
economic  and  industrial  structure,  changes 
tliat  evolution  is  slowly  but  surely  bringing 
about.  So  long  as  any  girl  is  dependent 
upon  even  the  kindest  of  fathers,  she  is  not 
free  to  exercise  character  selection  in  mar- 
riage but  must  still  be  influenced,  though  it 
may  be  subconsciously,  by  the  traditions  of 
the  past.  Only  when  every  girl  assumes  the 
human  privilege  of  engaging  in  congenial, 
productive  work  may  she  be  released  from 
the  necessity  of  looking  to  some  man — 
within  or  without  the  law — for  her  support. 

If,  then,  for  racial  improvement  we  desire 
neither  parental,  nor  economic,  nor  any  form 
of  material  selection,  but  choose  for  our 
standard  character,  or  inner  selection — ^what 
have  we  to  guide  us?  Is  spiritual  love  gos- 
samer and  illusive,  or  does  it  possess  some 
tangible  measure  of  attraction  that  flesh  and 
blood  men  and  women  may  grasp? 

The  stronger  the  spiritual  nature  the 
stronger  the  control  over  the  physical.  Spir- 
itual love  is  normal  in  that  it  only  recog- 


160     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

nizes  nature's  complete  unity.  Spiritual 
selection  is  practical  since  it  warns  love 
not  to  be  content  with  a  fraction  of  its  rights, 
a  sensuous  portion  of  its  necessities.  It 
recognizes  psychical  needs,  and  rejects  as 
transitory  and  unadvantageous  any  attrac- 
tion that  fails  to  satisfy  spiritual  as  well  as 
material  well-being. 

To  speak  of  this  type  of  love  is  indeed  to 
enter  humanity's  Holy  of  HoHes.  Yet  this 
unifying  form  is  the  sole  love  that  has  re- 
generating value,  and  that  at  this  period  of 
mental  evolution  has  progressive,  racial 
worth. 

The  test  of  consummate  love  is  unfailing. 
Does  it  inspire?  True  love  is  a  call  to  great- 
ness— ^to  the  mountain  top  of  existence, 
there  to  live  with  the  flaming  use  of  all  one's 
powers.  We  are  larger  or  smaller  human 
beings  according  to  the  height  and  the  depth 
of  our  love. 

How  may  spiritual  affinity  be  recognized? 
Some  standard  of  inner  attraction  each 
heart  must  find.  It  matters  little  so  long  as 
the  ultimate  selection  be  of  the  spirit.    In  a 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         161 

life  union,  will  the  soul  find  companionship  ? 
Otherwise  the  body  will  be  a  house  without 
a  tenant.    The  soul  will  have  traveled  on. 

What  is  the  unfailing  magnet  that  deter- 
mines this  highest  order  of  attraction? 
Swedenborg  expressed  it  when  he  declared 
"Do  you  love  me?"  means  *'Do  you  see  the 
same  truth?"  Two  people  may  have  many 
points  of  congeniality.  They  may  even 
have  bodily  possession.  But  unless  there  is 
agreement  in  the  realm  of  truth  thev  are- 
strangers.  Their  spirits  do  not  belong  to 
each  other. 

Is  it  possible  for  two  personalities, 
through  the  lenses  of  varying  temperaments 
and  different  sexes,  to  see  truth  ahke  ?  Does 
"belonging"  imply  complete  unanimity  at 
every  point,  the  orbit  of  one  mind  fitting 
closely  on  the  other?  If  this  were  essential, 
spiritual  love  would,  indeed,  be  unnatural. 
Nature  seeks  variety  and  combinations  of 
varying  types.  Complete  uniformity  is  not 
found  in  any  of  her  species.  But  do  you 
possess  a  similar  vision?  Does  life  imply  to 
both  the  same  high  opportunity,  and  is  mar- 


162     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

riage  one  of  the  means  to  this  end?  That  is 
the  essential.  Minor  differences  may  exist 
and  lend  zest  to  interest.  Agreement  must 
exist  in  the  fundamental  facts,  in  belief  in 
life's  high  purpose,  direction,  and  goal. 

For  two  people  to  see  the  same  truth,  to 
pool  their  vision  and  jointly  work  for  it,  is 
to  enrose  life  with  a  new  color  and  en- 
thusiasm. Such  was  the  secret  of  the  com- 
plete union  of  Robert  and  Elizabeth  Brown- 
ing, so  strongly  robust  yet  so  exquisitely 
spiritual,  and  of  certain  social  workers 
of  to-day.  Such  unions  illustrate  the  in- 
evitable accord  of  souls  bound  together  by 
a  mutual  vision  for  humanity,  spending 
themselves  for  it. 

Must  a  youth,  then,  ask  a  maiden,  "Do 
you  see  the  same  truth  as  I  see?"  The  ques- 
tion would  be  as  superfluous  as  it  would  be 
ridiculous.  If  normal  opportunity  to  meet 
her  is  furnished,  her  conduct,  her  conversa- 
tion, her  interests  will  declare  her  relation- 
ship to  truth.  What  you  are,  Emerson  tells 
us,  shouts  from  you  louder  than  what  you 
say.      To    recognize    truth,    embodied    in 


SELECTION  IN  MARRIAGE         163 

personality,  however,  one  must  first  possess 
it.  In  spiritual  affinities,  as  in  chemical  at- 
tractions, the  law  is  of  like  to  like. 

Will  spiritual  selection  sift  the  strong 
from  the  weak  mercilessly  as  did  natural 
selection  in  the  past?  Happily  it  may.  If 
selective  love  refused  to  accept  any  indi- 
vidual lacking  the  spiritual  requisite  of 
character  control,  all  forms  of  iniquity  would 
eventually  die.  "The  survival  of  the  fittest 
is  the  extinction  of  the  unfit.'* 

Spiritual  selection  alone  must  regenerate 
since  it  is  the  only  power  that  will  overcome 
the  materiahsm  that  still  beclouds  marriage. 
What  Pf  man  is  mn<it.  hp  renn^Wprl  tv  of 
greater  racial  consequey^ff'  ^^m  wl^«t  «  "lan 
has.  When  what  a  man  intrinsically  is  he- 
comes  the  first  consideration- — that  is,  what 
he  has  made  of  himself  by  the  self-directing 
power  of  his  own  will,  health,  character,  and 
ability  becoming  the  criteria — the  Httle  pile 
of  gold  dust  that  a  man  has  collected, 
usually  from  the  hfelong  toil  of  some 
other  man,  will  become  an  all  too  petty 
standard  of  selection.     A  fortune  in  itself 


164     THE  AWAKENING  OF  WOMAN 

is  not  an  evil.  It  is  the  cost  of  acquisition 
that  condemns  it — the  development  of  com- 
mercialism often  at  the  high  price  of  atrophy 
of  inner  qualities  that  racially  count.  In 
the  future  deeds  of  character,  not  deeds  of 
land,  must  determine  fitness.  A  new  aristoc- 
racy will  then  be  formed  with  a  new  pride 
of  pedigree,  a  new  hope  of  descent. 

When  the  transforming  ideals  of  the 
woman's  movement  are  more  widely  recog- 
nized; when  marriage  is  regarded  as  a  union 
of  individuahties  as  well  as  of  individuals; 
when  men  and  women  select  for  lasting 
rather  than  for  ephemeral  possessions, 
humanity  will  leap  forward  impelled  by  the 
vigor  of  its  own  momentum.  Then  the 
fruits  of  the  spirit — goodness,  gentleness, 
faith,  self-mastery  and  self-direction,  the 
inspiring  Pauline  Virtues — will  be  accentu- 
ated as  of  greatest  survival  value.  They, 
only,  are  the  spiritual  bed  rock  on  which  to 
ground  a  regenerated  race. 


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